Roots
by Lotos-Eater
Summary: [NejiTen, Futurefic]  His mother is one of the best kunoichi in Konoha.  His father is a mystery.  What kind of ninja he will become remains to be seen.
1. Chapter 1

1. 

--

He always knew he was different from the other students at the Academy. A lot of kids were orphans or half-orphans, like him, but that was a common fact of life in a ninja village. To lose one parent wasn't so extraordinary. But it seemed like no matter who in their family tree was living or dead, everyone else at least knew where they came from. He himself had a mother who everyone seemed to know, since she was one of the most respected kunoichi of the village and belonged to what was arguably the best non-ANBU team in the current roster. But no one ever talked about his father.

It didn't bother him too much until he made genin and was placed on a four-man team.

He didn't feel much of anything when he heard the names called out for "Team 9." The others were a boy named Rikyu and a kunoichi, Akiko. He knew them both from a distance, though neither had been friends of his. His best friend Isamu was a year younger than him and wasn't done at the Academy yet, so regardless of whose names were called for Team 9 he wasn't going to get excited about it. Yoshio didn't get excited about much to begin with – it was a bad habit for a shinobi.

Rikyu was well-known in his class for being obnoxious and mean. He didn't have any friends and wasn't a very good ninja in most respects, but he had a mean kick to his taijutsu that tended to leave deep bruises on his opponents for weeks. Akiko was more than a little odd. She didn't seem to have any friends at all, but she also didn't seem to notice. Because her face was typically buried behind a book, the only part of her that was easily recognizable was her bright red hair. She probably knew more ninjutsu than the rest of the class put together, but from what Yoshio had seen of her she wasn't much of a fighter.

Yoshio knew his classmates' traits because he himself was one of the better ninja in his class. He didn't think he was the best by any means, but he usually landed second or third in the rankings on any given test and had placed first more than once. Moreover, he always knew what he was up against. His mother had taught him how to judge the skills of other ninja, and he'd made a habit of cataloguing his classmates' strengths and weaknesses. He knew the knowledge would come in handy eventually. His mother had already explained to him how it was never too early to start getting the information you could use in the chunin exam.

His sensei was another matter. When this jonin had first walked into their classroom, Yoshio and everyone else had recognized him instantly, and Yoshio couldn't help but feel a spark of pride when the man was assigned to his team. He didn't miss the jealous looks from the rest of the class either. His sensei was one of the best-known and most talented jonin in the village, and his notoriety went much farther than the village border.

But if Yoshio had any expectations from this jonin's reputation, they changed drastically that first day when he stood side by side with his other genin teammates as they watched their sensei pick through his pockets with increasing frustration. He started to take off articles of clothing and shake them out in a wild search for something. "They were just here – I could have _sworn _I had them here. Hang on, did I put them in my shoe? Hang on a second…"

Five minutes later, the respect and awe they felt for the most notorious member of the Rookie Nine had dwindled. Akiko had given up waiting and had sat herself on the ground and pulled out a book. Rikyu was chucking kunai at a tree, trying to nail a squirrel. Only Yoshio was still standing patiently when their sensei's eyes lit up as he pulled out two cheap-looking, unimpressive bells and dangled them in front of his team. "Found them!"

Akiko looked up from her book and raised an eyebrow.

"What's so great about bells?" Rikyu asked.

"Um, nothing I guess… never mind that! This is a test!"

"_Another _test? I thought we were done with those when we graduated," Rikyu whined. But Akiko suddenly looked interested. She even seemed to be considering putting down her book.

"What's the test, Naruto-sensei?" Yoshio asked.

His teammates' eyes snapped to him immediately, as if they were shocked to hear him speak. Yoshio knew that other people in his class thought he was quiet, but they didn't actually think he couldn't talk, did they?

Yoshio's respect for his sensei had recovered slightly several hours later, after Akiko had been freed from the log, Rikyu had accidentally knocked over their bento boxes, and Naruto had declared that he would treat them all to ramen as a reward for having passed his test.

Rikyu stuck his nose up at it and sat glowering with his arms crossed across his chest. He was loudly embarrassed to be seen in public with either of the other genin on his team. Akiko politely told the girl serving them that she was allergic to ginger and went back to reading, although she allowed herself to pick at a bowl of miso ramen between pages. Naruto-sensei kept the smile plastered to his face through everything and had finished two bowls of ramen before Yoshio was halfway through his first. Yoshio didn't especially like ramen, but he ate it without argument because he felt kind of bad for the way his teammates were acting.

Naruto had spotted another one of the Rookie Nine across the street and had run over to talk to him (or maybe, Yoshio thought, just to get away from his weird genin) when Rikyu asked, "So what's your deal?"

Yoshio looked up at the boy next to him. Akiko was still glued to her book, but Rikyu was staring at him with that sharp gaze he used to size up opponents. "What do you mean?" Yoshio asked calmly.

"You barely said anything to anyone back at the Academy, but everyone thinks you're so great. I've seen you in action now and _I _don't think you're much of a ninja."

Akiko lowered her book and looked at them, drawing Rikyu's attention. Her eyes glinted darkly at Rikyu and she opened her mouth, but what she said was, "Can you pass me a napkin?"

Rikyu did not pass her a napkin. He turned back to Yoshio. "You're not from a clan like I am. You don't even have a family name. So who do you belong to?"

Yoshio couldn't figure out what Rikyu ws getting at. When Naruto-sensei had asked them to say something about themselves earlier that day, they'd each given their answers. Akiko had told them she liked reading novels and wanted to learn at least a thousand jutsu like Hatake Kakashi and use them to make lots of money. Rikyu had said he wanted to be able to beat up all of his classmates and relatives. Yoshio had said he just wanted to be a good ninja. Apparently that wasn't enough for Rikyu. Rikyu was part of the Matsumoto clan, and ninja from his family had served Konoha for many generations. They didn't have any bloodline limits, but they were famous for their heartless obedience. He supposed Rikyu just wanted to know whether he had a clan like that.

Yoshio shrugged. "My mother doesn't have a family name or any living relatives." His mother's parents had immigrated from a country where only the very rich had family names, and his grandparents had died years before he was born.

"So what about your father? Is he a ninja?"

Yoshio concentrated on twirling noodles around his chopsticks. "I don't have a father," he said.

"What, he's dead or something? Did he get killed by enemy ninja?"

Yoshio opened his mouth to respond when it struck him: he didn't know. He really didn't know. Of course, he'd always assumed his father was dead, but the few times he'd asked her, his mother either refused to talk about it or changed the subject. He had thought of asking other people before, but somehow it just didn't seem right. No one ever mentioned his father. No one saw him sparring and told him he took after his father; instead they watched how he threw kunai and told him he took after his mother. As far back as he could remember, there was not so much as one clue to who his father actually was.

This was all old news to Yoshio. What shocked him was that for the first time, he really wanted to know. He wanted to have an answer to Rikyu's question, and he felt strange and awkward not having anything to say. Instead the only response he could give was, "It's none of your business."

"So that's it, huh? Poor little Yoshio, his daddy was killed in battle… like _that's _so different. Half the kids in our class have parents stupid enough to die on missions. That's no big deal," Rikyu said bitterly.

"I never said that."

"So if that's not it, what is it? Your mother was a whore or something?"

Yoshio turned to look at Rikyu stonily. Before Yoshio even had a chance to respond, however, he heard a sudden _thwack, _Rikyu's eyes rolled up into his head, and he fell backward off of his stool.

Akiko shook her hand out and met Yoshio's gaze. She shrugged, then went immediately back to her book. "Well, _you _weren't going to do it," she mumbled, sounding annoyed.

Yoshio noticed that this had gotten Naruto's attention. Kiba, the ninja he'd been talking to, smirked at him and asked, "What was it you were saying about teamwork?" Meanwhile Naruto-sensei grinned uncomfortably and scratched the back of his head.

It was preying on Yoshio's mind when he walked home that night: who was his father? Why did no one ever mention him? It was a question that had drifted in and out of his mind for years, and he didn't know why it should bother him so much now. He supposed it wasn't what Rikyu had said, but the way he'd said it, as if the matter really made a difference to who he was. Rikyu's father was a ninja, and even though Akiko's parents had almost certainly been civilians he supposed that at least she knew who they both were. Yoshio's father could be anyone, dead or alive, for all he knew.

He made up his mind to ask his mother about it that night, but when he walked in the door of their apartment he saw that she wasn't alone. She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea with an old friend of hers, one that Yoshio had grown up calling "uncle" even though he wasn't a blood relation – by a long shot. He was a Hyuuga.

"So how did it go?" his mother asked him.

He shrugged after nodding hello and went to the fridge to get a soda. "Okay I guess. Naruto-sensei gave us a test and said we passed."

He didn't miss the amused glance between his mother and her teammate. "What?" he asked.

" 'Naruto-sensei.' I never thought I would live to hear that," Neji said.

"Do you feel old now?" Tenten asked him with a smirk.

"No. But I _am _wondering what this village is coming to."

Yoshio knew his mother had worked with Naruto before, and as far as he knew, Naruto lived up to his reputation, at least in the field, although he hadn't made such a huge impression today. "I thought he was supposed to be a great ninja," he said.

"Of course he is," his mother said, grinning at him. "Neji's still bitter about Naruto beating him when they went head-to-head in their first chunin exam."

Neji shot her a dirty look, although he was still smirking. She stuck her tongue out at him. Then she looked back to Yoshio and her forehead creased with concern. "What's that on your arm?"

Yoshio rolled his eyes, walked over, and stuck his arm out, knowing he wouldn't be able to get away from her. "It's just a scratch," he said. He was still kind of embarrassed about getting scratched with his own kunai while trying to attack his sensei to get a bell. If his mother knew it had been his own kunai, he would never live it down.

"How come you didn't clean it right away? It's getting infected."

"Naruto-sensei took us out for ramen after practice. I didn't have time."

"Well, you should have taken care of it. You can't just ignore it. What if this happened during a mission and you got sick in the field?"

"It's fine, Mom, it's not even that deep. It's just a scratch."

"Maybe you should go to the hospital."

"Mom…" he groaned.

"He's fine," Neji said, smiling at him. "He's a genin now. He can take care of himself."

Now Tenten shot Neji a dirty look. But Yoshio silently thanked him and escaped her grasp. "I'll clean it up," he said, leaving the kitchen and darting to the bathroom before she could stop him.

He could hear their bickering even when he was in the bathroom, but he knew them both well enough that he wasn't bothered by it. When they argued with each other, they always did so with grins on their faces. Yoshio might have been twelve, but he certainly was no innocent. He was already learning to see underneath the underneath, and he knew a lot about the world that most kids his age didn't. He knew, for instance, about his mother and Hyuuga Neji. Even though she went through a lot of trouble to make sure Yoshio never saw her teammate in the mornings, Yoshio had figured it out long ago. He didn't know why she still tried to keep it a secret from him – or from the rest of the village, for that matter.

He knew that out of all the people that might be his father, most evidence pointed to Hyuuga Neji.

In spite of that, he was sure beyond a doubt that Neji wasn't his father. He didn't have to look far for proof: it was right there in front of him in the bathroom mirror when he closed the door to the medicine cabinet. His eyes were brown, like his mother's. Not white.

--

**Author's Note. **Just a little experiment I'm trying. Let me know if there's interest for more.


	2. Chapter 2

2. 

--

Yoshio rolled over in his bed and stared wearily at the dimly-lit ceiling. His ninja instincts weren't very highly developed yet, so he couldn't snap awake in the morning like his mother did on a regular basis. His mind was still in a fog. Something had woken him up, but he couldn't remember what.

He'd had a lot on his mind before going to sleep. Yesterday had seen his first meeting with his genin team. Team 9. Yoshio, Rikyu, Akiko, and Uzumaki Naruto. Today would see their first mission. Was that what had woken him up? No, he was pretty sure he had heard something…

Suddenly his bedroom door burst open. "Hmm?" he said blearily.

"Yoshio-kun! You must rise to greet the glorious new morning of your Youth!"

Yoshio blinked slowly while the horror grew inside him. Then suddenly he rolled out of bed. "No! Uncle Lee… I can't… today… mission…"

"I shall lead you on ten laps around Konoha to stir your blood for the challenges to come, and then we shall scale the Hokage monument to celebrate your inductance into the ranks of Konoha shinobi!"

"I have to meet my team at ten!"

Lee was silent for a moment, doing the calculation in his head. "Then we shall make it twenty laps!"

"But I can't… I have to…"

"Nonsense! Into your ninja gear, quickly! If you cannot leave within five minutes, then you must do fifty push-ups in the kitchen!"

"No I don't… I… oh man…" Knowing how his required calisthenics would add up if he refused, Yoshio reluctantly started rooting around for his clothing. He had tried refusing before, when he was young and naive, but his mother would just force him to humor Lee in the end anyway. Usually it wasn't bad if he gave in right off the bat – it was when he showed symptoms of "laziness" that the friendly training sessions became rather gruesome.

Sure enough, five minutes later he was in his ninja gear. Lee was standing outside his room with a stop watch. "Excellent timing, young Yoshio! If we run fast enough, we may even have a chance to practice our taijutsu before you meet with your team!" Rock Lee was seemingly oblivious to the groan he got in response.

Suddenly Yoshio was feeling rather vindictive. "Why not get my mother to come with us? Perhaps she would like to share in this 'glorious morning' of training as well," he suggested.

"What an excellent idea, Yoshio! Perhaps Tenten would care to join us on our youthful conditioning spree?" he said loudly, looking pointedly at Tenten's closed bedroom door.

A few moments later Yoshio heard his mother's voice. "I'd come out, but unfortunately I'm fast asleep."

"Ah! Another time, then!"

"If she's asleep, she can't be talking!" Yoshio pointed out grumpily.

"Quickly! The young day waits for no man! We shall train your body until you reach the very pinnacle of ninja agility!" Lee cried, ignoring him. He made a dash for the door and held it open impatiently.

Yoshio silently vowed revenge before following.

--

Tenten waited to hear the door slam before letting out a giggle, which was muffled by Neji's shoulder. "That was cruel," Neji said.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, feigning sleepy innocence.

"You didn't even try to stop him."

"It's good for Yoshio. It builds character. I don't want him to grow up to be lazy like his mother."

"How very noble of you," Neji said sardonically as he lifted the arm that was lying across his chest and started to trail delicate kisses across the wrist. Tenten watched him with dancing eyes.

"I didn't see _you _trying to stop him," Tenten pointed out.

"That's because I'm not technically here," Neji said.

Tenten grinned while he pulled more of her arm into the reach of his lips. "You feel pretty here to me," she said. "I'm fairly certain that's not someone else's mouth."

"Only fairly certain?" he asked, bemused.

"Well, I can't be sure. Let me check." With another giggle she crawled on top of him and kissed him fully on the mouth, straddling his stomach, and then pulled away from his lips with a very satisfied look in her eyes. She had always liked to be in this position, looking down at him. It reminded her of the few times she had actually beaten him when they were sparring during their first few years on team Gai. Those moments had been rare, and when it happened he would always stare up at her with that perplexed, offended, condescending look on his face, as if he were saying: _You got lucky. So what? _It was a far cry from the look he gave her now.

This open love between them still felt so new she hardly knew what to do with it, even though they had been more or less together for almost two years now and he'd been practically living with her for the last few months. She didn't think she would ever be used to this intimacy from him – which wasn't so strange, she reflected, considering how long it had taken them to get this far. She'd changed a lot over the years – they'd both changed. The man lying below her on the bed now certainly wasn't the iceberg she'd met as a genin or even the cool and clinically perfect shinobi of his ANBU years. She grinned down at him. "Mmm. It's definitely you. No one else has that morning breath."

He feigned a look of offense and rolled his white eyes. "You're one to talk…" he mumbled.

"What's that? I didn't quite catch that."

Instead of answering her, he pulled her down by the arms and drew her face down to his and drowned out her giggles with one long kiss. And he didn't give her a chance to tease him for a while after that.

--

She made breakfast for him. It was becoming one of their habits – at least when Yoshio wasn't home. It wasn't really breakfast so much as warmed-up leftovers from her fridge, but he never complained about her cooking. If he wanted fresh food at every meal, he could go home to the Hyuuga compound and make demands of the kitchen staff at his disposal there. Even though he was only a Branch family member, he ranked high in his household. It was because of his status as one of the top ninja of the village, but it was also because the Hyuuga clan had changed so much – especially over the past five years, the lines between Main and Branch families were beginning to blur. At the moment, though, his mind wasn't on his own household, but the woman who sat across from him at her kitchen table with the whole of her being totally concentrated on the sharpening of one kunai. "When are you going to tell him?" he asked her, picking idly through his bowl with his chopsticks to fish out the bits of meat.

She continued to hone the blade without looking at him. "I don't know," she finally said. "He just made genin, he's got plenty to deal with right now."

Neji knew an excuse when he heard one. "You don't give him enough credit," he said. "Or maybe it's not him that you're worried about…" he added.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked sharply.

"Maybe you're afraid. Maybe you're having second thoughts."

This time she stopped and put down the kunai on the table. She folded her arms and looked at him darkly, and he met her gaze. He always gave her the plain truth, because she was one of the few people he had ever met that could deal with the plain truth. That was one of the things he loved about her.

"I'll tell you what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid he's twelve, and in about a minute he's going to be thirteen. He's already a genin and I don't doubt he's going to be a chunin as soon as his team is whipped into shape. All in all I think he's old enough to make up his own mind about whether he wants to come with me."

After a moment of seeing his confusion, she added, by way of explanation, "He's not a Hyuuga. He won't fit in there. Most chunin move away from their families. Maybe…"

She left that sentence hanging for a minute, and when she said the last word he noticed her pupils drift off to the side, as if thinking of things to come that she didn't look forward to with pleasure. So that was it. She didn't want the boy to grow up and get away from her. Ironic, considering how she had barely known what to do with him when he was a baby.

"You're afraid he's going to leave you?" Neji said, not bothering to hide his amusement.

"I'm afraid he'll think I'm deserting him," she said.

"You're afraid he's going to leave you," Neji said more certainly.

She shrugged her shoulders with a sigh. "Maybe," she said. "Anyway, you could hardly blame him if he did. No offense, but the Hyuuga don't exactly welcome outsiders with open arms."

"That's not stopping you," he said.

"That's different," she said with a wry smile. "I've got you. You're something of a consolation."

--

Tsunade was bent over her desk filling out paperwork on chunin mission statistics when Shizune walked in with her day's schedule of missions and the new genin rosters. "Naruto's team has their first mission today," Shizune said brightly. "Have you thought about what to give them?"

"Are there any missing cats?" Tsunade asked, not looking up.

"…Not today, no."

"Anyone's roof need mending?"

"Er, no, but there's an old man in the southeast district who wants to lay bricks for a path through his front yard."

"Well, there we go then," Tsunade said with a smile.

"I wonder how Naruto will like doing D-rank missions again."

Tsunade dropped the pen on her desk and stretched back in her chair. "One thing's for sure. Like it or not, I'm going to keep that team on D-rank missions for as long as I can. And Naruto will not be allowed to argue."

"He, uh, doesn't usually ask permission first," Shizune noted.

"Shizune, have you looked at the dossiers on those genin?"

Shizune nodded, looking a little crestfallen. "I read Nobu-sensei's comments too." Nobu had taken over Iruka's position at the Academy after the latter was promoted to jonin. Shizune seemed to be searching for something positive to say. "Well… at least Tenten's son looks promising…"

"Why Nobu wanted to put the other two with him, I'll never know."

"But it's standard to put the genin with good grades on the same team as the underachievers…"

"But those two are both clearly career genin," Tsunade said, "and given who his mother is, I had higher hopes for Yoshio."

Shizune bit her lip. She hated to hear anyone called a "career genin." That was the informal classification given to all those ninja who spent most of their lives on guard duty on the village walls, message delivery runs, or on missions that required more numbers than skill and usually entailed taking orders from chunin half their age. These were ninja who were given the most ignominious work that adult ninja could be given, and who never tried – or were simply never able – to rise above their station. They were the genin who usually dropped out of the chunin exam during the first test.

Who, when worse came to worst, were typically the first to be sent to the front lines. "Cannon fodder" was another term for it.

"But you assigned Naruto to them." Shizune said helplessly.

Tsunade shrugged. "You want to know the truth? I decided on impulse two days ago to make him a jonin sensei, because I wanted an excuse not to send him out on any S-class missions for a while. I'm sure you know why."

Shizune nodded again. Naruto had been a little reckless of late – even for him. Which was understandable, given the events of the last year…

"The only reason he was assigned to this team, specifically, was that they were the only ones left without a sensei," Tsunade said, with a hint of amusement. "At the time I didn't even think of the fact that this will be the first official team he's been on since Sakura was killed."

--

It wasn't a fact that the ninja of Konoha paid much attention to, but there were at least three neighborhoods in the city where anyone could tell, just from the look of the houses, that the people who lived there were, to put it gently, not as fortunate as the rest. There was the street that made up Konoha's one and only red light district, which was fairly innocent by most cities' standards but still had a reputation to live down to. A step below that was the southern corner, which was well-known for being full of people who had never made it as ninja and tended to resent the people who had. It wasn't a happy place to live. The poorest area of town, though, was the street that curved below the eastern limits of the civilian sector, so close to the outer wall that it was hardly in Konoha at all. The houses were all run-down, the street itself was usually scattered with refuse, and the businesses when they survived at all did so mostly through under-the-table transactions.

A middle-aged woman stuck her head through the doorway in one of these domiciles. She had an infant on her hip and a sour look on her face, and her clothing looked as though she'd been wearing it for over a week and it hadn't been washed. A pair of screaming children raced past her in bare feet. "Keishi! Mamoru! You better get back here and eat your breakfasts! If you get caught stealing food again I swear by all the gods I'll let Ibiki take you in for questioning!" She looked cross and sounded worse. Her voice was the hoarse voice of someone who'd spent too many years chain-smoking and yelling. One of the boys looked over his shoulder and flung a vulgar gesture at her; she threatened a beating and he disappeared along with his brother.

"I swear, if they get caught, so help me…" she mumbled. The baby on her hip started to whine and the woman quickly pulled a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches out, lighting one as she began to bounce the unhappy baby. Inside, another young child's voice rang out, calling for attention. The woman turned sharply to the girl who sat, unnoticed by all others, on the doorstep with her head firmly planted in the pages of a book. "Akiko! Go help your cousin."

The girl's eyes didn't waver from the text she was reading. "He wants breakfast," she said without looking up.

"I know he wants breakfast! Get him something to chew on for now!"

"He doesn't need something to chew on, he needs something to eat," she said calmly.

"Well I would _give _him something to eat if I had it, but since your uncle took all my grocery money and gambled it off, I don't have anything a kid without teeth can eat, so I guess he's stuck!" she cried. "Now go in there and pick him up, or so help me…"

"I'm not afraid of you," Akiko said. "I'm a ninja." Her face remained buried in the book and her voice remained even. There was nothing especially ninja-like in her appearance, except that she wore tight black pants underneath her green dress in the style that many other kunoichi used out of practicality. The dress itself was cheap, old, and fairly hideous, and the color set off the blatant red-orange of her hair in a startling way. If she was a kunoichi, a passerby might have thought, her specialty was surely not stealth.

The woman looked furious. But she turned her back on Akiko and headed into the house. A few moments later there was a sharp _slap, _and the child inside stopped its crying. Akiko raised her head at the noise and turned her head toward the house, looking a little pale, but she didn't say a word about it. She closed her book and stuck it in her pocket, and then she got up off the step and brushed off her dress. It was time to go and meet her team. She turned her back on the house without another glance at it and started walking.

"Where do you think your going?" the woman snapped from inside the house.

"I have a mission. I won't be back until late," Akiko said as she walked away.

"Oh no you don't. You need to help your uncle at the shop today. You're not going anywhere." Her aunt was quickly back out on the doorstep minus either child, and inside you could already hear their whines beginning to build in tandem.

"It's not my fault he's too stupid to do anything for himself," Akiko mumbled.

"What was that?"

"I have to go now."

"Have to go? What do you think you're doing?" If the woman was starting to sound like a broken record, she would be the last to care. Her eyes were sharp and accusatory, augmented by the stress lines radiating out from the corners. She might have been in her thirties, but she looked much older. Gray hair was already streaking from her temples.

"I'm a ninja," Akiko said, not bothering to glance up at the woman. "I have a mission."

"Wait right there, young lady. You can't just sleep under our roof and eat the food we put on your plate and then walk off whenever you feel like it…" Her aunt marched down the steps and started to walk down the street after her. Akiko picked up her pace until the woman behind her was huffing. She tried to ignore the stares they were getting from curious neighbors.

"I have a mission," Akiko said over her shoulder while she walked.

The woman gave up in exhaustion and put her hands on her hip, watching the young girl walk away – she was already pulling a book out of her pocket and burying her face in it to avoid the staring of the spectators on the street. "Well, that's gratitude!" the woman shouted. "We take you out of your useless father's hands and this is how you thank us? I'm ashamed to be related to such a worthless little girl."

"I'm a ninja," Akiko mumbled to herself as she walked. Then she tuned everyone else out and all she noticed was her book. This was unfortunate for the people who had the luck to walk in front of her.

--

The Matsumoto clan had a small enclave in Konoha. It was much smaller than the Akimichi or Hyuuga compounds, but it was a step above what most ninja families had. There wasn't a lot of decoration – the houses were sparsely furnished, and the family dojo looked just as bland as the one at the Academy. The Matsumoto clan seemed to take pride in its lack of distinguishing features.

Although by no means a noble clan of Konoha, the Matsumoto were an old family with deep roots in the village. They didn't possess any special jutsu, but every male Matsumoto – and most of the females – had carried on the family tradition of becoming obedient, reliable shinobi ever since the villageof Konoha had been founded.

In the dojo that morning, Matsumoto Rikyu was busy practicing his taijutsu. He seemed to take great enjoyment in this, even providing the necessary sound effects as he pounded the practice post. His new headband was wrapped around his black-haired head, worn in the style of his new sensei, with the ends trailing down his back.

He was visualizing the post as his least favorite classmate, the one who always placed first in the tests and sneered at everyone who didn't. He then visualized it as the Academy instructor who told him he needed to work on chakra control every day of the term in front of his entire class, then all the stupid giggling girls he knew – one after the other, then his cousins, then some more of his classmates, and finally Yoshio, who he imagined taking several well-placed kicks to the head and putting his seldom-used voice to good use begging for Rikyu to stop.

He was so intensely busy with beating this practice post down he didn't notice the other ninja drop down behind him and land a chop on his upper arm until the arm started throbbing. He turned to face his two attackers: his brother and his least favorite cousin.

The pain tempered his rage a little, but not when he saw the face of the ninja who caused it. "Get lost," he snarled, turning back to the practice post, letting go of his arm, and trying to pretend that he couldn't already feel the large purple bruise forming on his arm.

"Aw… poor little Rikyu. Did the big bad post beat you up?" his cousin said.

"Shut up," Rikyu said.

His brother's smile didn't change, but his body moved faster than Rikyu's eyes, and Rikyu felt the impact before he registered what had happened or recognized the pain.

"Don't tell _me _to shut up, you little shit," he whispered harshly.

Rikyu clutched the side of his head, wincing, but then he opened his eyes again, firmly looking away from the looming presences of the two older boys. "You're not any better than me," Rikyu said. "I'm a genin now, just like you, and I'm going to make chunin before you do."

Something about these words set the older boy off. With a _snap _his fist connected with Rikyu's stomach, and the force was so great that the Rikyu's legs gave out. He crumpled onto the floor with a groan, clutching himself. For a second he forgot how mad he was, distracted by how much it hurt.

The older boy grinned, looking down at him. "You'll never make chunin. I can't believe they even made you _genin. _Stop kidding yourself. Idiot."

Rikyu kept his eyes closed while he listened to the other two jump away. When he was sure they were gone, he opened his eyes again and slowly stood up, and then, ignoring the sting of the welt that was starting to form on his stomach, he returned to his taijutsu forms and directed his attention back to the practice post. Only now, instead of the faces of his classmates, he saw only one. It was much more like his own – just a few years older.

The practice post was in pieces by the time he was done with it.

--

Yoshio had escaped. He knew he'd have to pay for it later – he knew there were many, many, many laps around Konoha, one-armed push-ups, and speeches about youthful energy in his future – but honestly he had to meet up with his team soon, and he was starving. If he didn't eat before their first mission he was going to be in trouble – especially if it turned out to be a difficult one. Probably it was just something easy, like guard duty or an escort, but you never knew. And even guard duty could get messy sometimes, he knew from listening to his mother's stories. He wanted to be ready for anything on his first mission. More importantly – and it surprised him that it mattered to him – he didn't want to embarrass himself in front of Rikyu. The boy was annoying, cruel, and arrogant, hardly worth the time it took to think about him in Yoshio's opinion, but the last thing Yoshio wanted was to look weak compared to him. The slight against his mother still stung, maybe because he hadn't had the chance to retaliate.

He was now dashing back to the apartment he shared with her. If he was fast enough, he could even get in a shower and a change of clothes so he wouldn't meet the others looking completely disgusting. He had a brief mental vision of the sweat stains under Rock Lee's armpits and shuddered deeply.

Halfway up the stairs, however, he met someone else coming down.

The Hyuuga had been lost in thought and clearly hadn't expected to see him. Yoshio realized a little guiltily that he shouldn't have been so preoccupied himself – he usually had more presence as a ninja, at least enough to listen for another set of footfalls.

After the moment of recognition, the man smirked at him. "Still alive, I see."

Yoshio stared at him stonily. There were a lot of things he could say in response – about how the Hyuuga had known what he had been doing this morning, or how he was even now walking down the stairs from – which apartment now? Let's think…

It was fine with Yoshio that his mother wanted to keep up whatever pretenses she wanted, but Yoshio wasn't going to play dumb when the evidence was standing a few stairs in front of him.

Hyuuga Neji didn't seem too concerned with pretenses either.

"Are you hungry?" Neji asked him.

He nodded.

"Come on, then," Neji said, and continued down the stairs, completely nonplussed.

Yoshio paused for a few seconds. The food in his apartment was physically closer, and he didn't especially love awkward silences with the Hyuuga, but he had a feeling there was a reason behind this gesture, and now he wanted to know what it could be.

--

Neji didn't even eat; he sipped tea while Yoshio blindly shoveled food into his mouth. There weren't too many other people in the restaurant this time of day, since it was too late for most shinobi to eat breakfast and too early for most civilians to eat lunch. "You wanted to talk?" Yoshio asked between mouthfuls. It was true that he didn't talk much, but when he did he generally went straight to the point.

"What makes you think that?" Neji asked.

"You bought me breakfast and you weren't even hungry. There's no other reason why you wouldn't just let me go home to eat." He silently added, to himself: and you don't exactly have to spoil me to get on my mother's good side.

"Analytical. A good trait in a ninja," Neji mused.

When the man sipped his tea and didn't say anything else, Yoshio started to feel slightly nervous. It was hard to deal with someone who was even less talkative than he was, and he knew from long experience that Neji was just that. As much of a father-figure as Neji had been to him, they didn't speak all that often, and when they did his mother was usually there, and even when she wasn't they never talked about anything… personal. Still, Neji had helped him train to be what he was. It was Neji that had explained to him how chakra worked the first time he had ever tried to mold it, and the it was the Hyuuga who had taught him kawarimi no jutsu and how to create a clone.

Plus, when he was little, Neji used to look after him every once in a while, just like Lee did. Yoshio had preferred them to the babysitters he got when Team Gai went on long missions together, not just because they were always willing to help him practice his taijutsu, but because they would let him eat whatever and whenever he wanted. He hadn't needed a babysitter for years, though. Even when he was very little, he could pretty much take care of himself. The worst trouble he ever got into as a little kid when his mother was away was kicking a hole in the wall one time when he and Isamu were sparring inside the apartment. Neji had seen this, had raised an eyebrow at him in such a way that he wanted to melt into the floor, and then had taken two minutes and wordlessly mounted a picture over the hole. To this day his mother had never even noticed.

Suffice to say, even though they were on friendly terms, he and Neji had never had what you would call a heartfelt conversation.

Suddenly a thought struck him. He knew almost immediately that it was stupid, but he was so excited by the idea that he couldn't keep his mouth shut long enough to rethink what he was saying. He blurted it out before his brain had a chance to intervene. "You're not going to tell me that you're my father, are you?" he asked.

Hyuuga Neji didn't have a wide range of expressions, so it was impossible to tell if he was surprised by this, but Yoshio was watching his face for any indication of it. His senses were acutely sharpened. Neji just gave him a vague smile. "Sorry to disappoint."

"So you're definitely not my father," he said, wanting to leave no uncertainty on that point.

"No, I'm not your father."

Yoshio felt deflated, suddenly. He had always known that Neji wasn't his father, right? Why should it bother him so much now to hear someone say it out loud? He suddenly had another sickening suspicion… "It's not Lee, is it?"

This time the Hyuuga's expression actually did crack, and his mouth crooked into a familiar smirk. "Certainly not," he said.

Yoshio saw the laughter in Neji's eyes, but he didn't feel any of it himself. "Uncle Neji," he said, "can you tell me who my father is?"

The smile fell off of Neji's face slowly and his expression went back to its usual opaque state. "I can't do that," he said. "It's between you and your mother."

Yoshio wanted to tell the man that every time he'd tried to bring it up, his mother changed the subject, but he felt like he had already said way too much. With great frustration he looked down at his plate and started violently digging into his food with his chopsticks.

"Why is it so important to you when you've never even met him?" Neji asked.

Yoshio personally thought that was a stupid question. "Wouldn't you want to know?"

"I would trust your mother," Neji said. "If it were important, wouldn't she have told you by now?"

Yoshio shrugged. "She's funny sometimes about… some things."

Like you, for instance, he wanted to say.

The rest of the time in the restaurant went by with little conversation. Yoshio ate as much as he could hold so that he wouldn't have to talk. The food did the trick: by the time they left, he was in a much better mood. "So you're not my father," he said again before they parted ways back on the street.

"No."

"You want the job though, right?"

He sent Neji's own smirk back at him and left to meet his team before Neji had a chance to respond.

--


	3. Chapter 3

3. 

--

Yoshio was halfway to the Hokage's tower when he thought of it.

_Why is it so important to you when you've never even met him?_

Neji would never tell him anything that his mother didn't want him to know, but what if he thought Yoshio had a right to know? Wouldn't he find some sly, indirect way to tell him? Neji was like that.

…_when you've never even met him?_

So obviously all the people that Yoshio knew were ruled out. Furthermore, all the people he'd known earlier in his life were ruled out, too. It certainly wasn't Neji or Lee, and even without the clue he would be equally sure that it wasn't Maito Gai, who had died when Yoshio was seven, but who Yoshio had certainly met – and after a brief bout of nausea at the thought of his mother and Maito Gai, Yoshio kept thinking. It couldn't have been any of the Rookie Nine, because Yoshio had met all of them at least once in his life – except for Uchiha Sasuke, but he was out of the question for obvious reasons.

Chances were good his father fell into one of two categories: one, he was a foreign ninja, or two, he had died before Yoshio was born. Or potentially when he was only very young.

Of course, Konoha was a large village, there were many shinobi he'd never met…

But then, who said it had to be a shinobi?

Yoshio didn't know how he felt about that. He'd always had a vague mental picture of who his father must be, and mostly it looked like Neji without the white eyes. Whoever it was _had _to be a shinobi, right? His mother was kind of an odd woman – he'd heard a lot of people say it – but she was proud and very strong. Respect was very important to her. The idea that she could have… with anyone so unlike her…

He had to cut off that train of thought at the quick, because it made him decidedly uncomfortable. No, it had to be a shinobi. It just had to be.

"Hey!"

He suddenly had to focus his eyes on where he actually was – in Konoha, walking straight to the Hokage's tower, and having just bumped into someone and knocked them over. He blinked and glanced down, and he was slightly annoyed to see that it was his kunoichi teammate, who was staring at him with much annoyance. He held out a hand to help her up. "A shinobi should watch where they're going," she grumbled, ignoring the hand he held out and getting to her feet on her own.

_Like you were, _he thought. Her eyes were scanning the ground around her, and then she suddenly darted down and grabbed the book that she'd dropped. In a few seconds she was walking and reading again as if she'd never even crashed into him. The only thing that gave her away was that her ponytail of ghastly red hair was slightly messier than normal. Yoshio found himself walking beside her, if for no other reason than because she was walking toward the Hokage's tower, where their team was meeting. Out of curiousity, he let his eyes wander over to the cover of her book. _Oniji's Guide to Advanced Combat Tactics, Vol. 6. _He blinked in surprise, then quickly looked forward again to avoid being caught.

He felt disappointed. For how obsessed she seemed, he'd expected a romance novel at least.

They were probably the two quietest people in their class; left to their own devices, conversation was just not going to happen. They walked to the spot outside the Hokage's tower where the team was going to meet, at which point Akiko promptly sat down on the ground with her back against the wall of the tower, folding her legs under her, and became so engrossed in reading that Yoshio was actually kind of embarrassed for her. People who walked by probably thought that he was just waiting by himself, and she was a weirdo that just happened to be passing time in the same place.

He crossed his arms and leaned back against the tower, closing his eyes and trying to sharpen his other senses. He could hear the murmur of passersby on the street around them and the chatter of birds, the barking of a dog, a baby crying – someone was carrying it back and forth across a window. He could smell the disturbed dust of the street and a vendor frying fish nearby. The sun beat down on his lightly freckled skin and made him sleepy.

Even though he was trying to hone his shinobi senses, he found his mind wandering to the problem of his father. For some reason he was stuck on the image of a brown-eyed Neji, even though he knew it was illogical. _Who are you, where did you come from, and where are you now?_

Before he could get much into that, however, he was interrupted by a sudden outburst.

"Why the hell are you always reading? What's wrong with you? You need to hide your face behind a book because you're so ugly or something?"

Yoshio opened his eyes a fraction and looked over at his teammates.

Akiko raised her eyes above her book and fixed them on Rikyu. Rikyu had appeared out of nowhere, and he was slouching in front of her and glaring hard. He obviously wasn't going to forget the bump on his head that she'd given him yesterday. Yoshio had to look twice at Rikyu – the other boy was dressed differently now than he was yesterday. He wore gray taijutsu pants and a loose gray cotton shirt belted at the waist in the style of his clan, and his hitai-ite was tied around his forehead with the ends hanging down his back just like Naruto-sensei's.

"Come on! You're such a lousy ninja. Don't you ever do anything but read? We're never going to get any good missions unless you can do something useful. We've got to train _hard_, that means getting off your ass and actually _doing _something, not just sitting there with your… hey, aren't you listening to me?"

She certainly wasn't. Her nose was pointed back at the page; he might as well have been yelling at the wall.

"Cut it out, Rikyu," Yoshio said.

He regretted it almost immediately. Rikyu turned on him with sharp eyes. "You know, I'm obviously the leader of this team, and I think you might be an okay ninja if you wanted to be," he said magnanimously, "but if we don't whip this kunoichi into shape we're never going to make it to chunin. You should be on my side."

Yoshio hadn't really paid much attention to Rikyu at the Academy – he was a passable ninja, but not enough of a threat to warrant observation. He was starting to wish he didn't have to pay attention to him now, either. He couldn't imagine anyone more obnoxious. Did he actually expect Yoshio to _agree _with him?

Rikyu turned away from them both when Yoshio failed to respond and crossed his arms grumpily. He faced the rest of Konohagakure with a scowl. "Our team _sucks,_" he said.

It occurred to Yoshio that for the first time, and probably the last time, he and Rikyu were thinking exactly the same thing.

Suddenly Rikyu had to jump away, because their sensei landed right where he had been standing. The blonde jonin was smiling so hard his eyes were squinting, and his hands were on his hips. "Okay, team! Are you ready for your first mission?" he asked.

In spite of Naruto's sudden appearance, Akiko still hadn't looked up from her book, and Rikyu was still scowling at the world. Yoshio tried to imagine them accomplishing anything together. He felt that the definite answer to his sensei's question was _no._

--

Yoshio trudged up the stairs to his home and tried to ignore the fact that every time one of his feet hit the ground he was leaving a gigantic muddy splotch. His mood was black. It was early evening, and he was just returning home from the bad dream that was Team 9's latest non-adventure. They'd spent the entire week helping a family on the outskirts of Konoha plant rice.

D-rank missions? They'd had a few of them.

He thought back to that first day. He'd noticed that after she announced the scope of their first mission, the Hokage and her assistant watched his sensei very carefully, as if looking for a reaction. Naruto had actually opened his mouth to say something – maybe protest – but had closed it quickly and said, through gritted teeth a few moments later, "Great! What's the old idiot's address? We'll finish and be back for another mission before the end of the day!"

Brick-laying some geezer's front walk would have taken a normal team at most an entire day. Not so for Team 9. Three days of arguments, incompetence, aggravation, and brow-beating later, they were standing back in front of the Hokage and getting another D-rank mission to fulfill. Then another and another. Dog-chasing. House-painting. Gardening. Bat extermination. And no matter how stupid or pointless the task, they always managed to take at least twice as long to finish it as an average team would have. Rikyu would gripe about the mission and refuse to take orders from Yoshio, who was honestly just trying to get the work out of the way as fast as possible. Rikyu didn't listen to anyone but Naruto-sensei, and even then he usually complained about whatever was said. Yoshio knew that if they did a good job with the stupid missions they'd eventually get decent ones, but if Rikyu wouldn't cooperate at all then it was hopeless. It didn't help that Naruto-sensei usually left them to their own devices, having no taste for D-rank missions himself and not feeling any obligation to help them. Rikyu usually tried to tell the other two what to do and wasted no time in pointing out that he was the only one of them who was a natural leader. When they didn't obey him – which was basically every mission – he ignored them and did whatever he wanted. Meanwhile Akiko didn't do much of anything but read, and Yoshio was left to get frustrated and increasingly short with the other two. He didn't have a whole lot of ambition as a ninja, but he at least wanted to be on a real team that got real missions. At this rate his team would never get anywhere.

Their training sessions weren't much better. Naruto-sensei always set them impossibly high goals, which they never reached, and somewhere along the way Rikyu would invariably start yelling at Akiko for not trying harder or at Yoshio for whatever stupid excuse he could come up with. Sparring matches were a nightmare. Akiko was pathetic, Rikyu just mean. Yoshio didn't really feel that it was fair to beat up Akiko and always got chewed out by Rikyu for going easy on her. Rikyu had no such hesitation when he fought the kunoichi. After only one match together, even Naruto-sensei had the sense not to pair up Rikyu and Akiko again. Yoshio usually beat Rikyu when they were paired off with each other, and Rikyu would get more and more brutal and desperate as they fought. By the end Yoshio always had more dark bruises than he was comfortable admitting, and Rikyu hated him more than ever. He found lots of colorful ways to express it, too.

After only one week of this, Yoshio had asked his mother if she knew whether it was possible to switch teams.

She'd looked a little distraught and had asked him if Naruto-sensei was really that bad, and Yoshio'd had to confess it had nothing to do with Naruto-sensei. In the end his mother told him that you literally were not allowed to switch teams until one of you made chunin or you'd served a year together. Yoshio had nearly given up all hope. Certainly none of them were making chunin anytime soon at this rate, and he doubted they'd make it a year without killing each other either.

He'd sort of thought it might get better with time – he'd imagined they might learn to work together or something – but nothing of the sort had happened. They were just as miserable a team now as they had been at the outset.

He managed to shake off some of the weariness of their latest mission, if not some of the mud, by the time he got to his own door. As soon as he was in the door he made sure to take off his boots so his mother wouldn't murder him. While he was struggling with them – the laces were still soaking wet – he noticed her walking through the kitchen with a purposeful stride, wearing her favorite mission gear. "Rough day, was it?" she asked him.

"I thought we were ninja, not farmers," he said darkly.

His mother only smiled at him slightly. She never seemed to have trouble finding the humor in his many D-rank missions. Yoshio did not quite feel the same way, and he scowled to show it. She only responded with dancing eyes and the words, "Dinner's on the table."

He trudged over to the table and sat down at the place she'd set for him while she continued to weave in and out of rooms. After he'd stuffed himself sufficiently and could stand to slow down, she collapsed into the chair across from him and made a last inventory of her pack. Even though it was obvious, he asked between bites, "You have a mission?"

"Team Gai. River Country. It's ten days at the outside. Hozumi will stop by tomorrow morning. I didn't have time to get groceries but I left money in your drawer…"

"I'm a genin. I don't need a babysitter," he said.

She paused only momentarily and smiled at him briefly. "Of course not. You're offering to do your own laundry, then? Thank god, I never thought I'd see the day…"

He would have protested if his mouth weren't full of food at that moment.

"Well, try not to kill any of your teammates before I get back. I'd hate to miss the drama. And don't let the D-rank missions get to you – every ninja has to go through them, it's a…"

"Rite of passage, I know, I know," he said tiredly, filling in the speech he'd heard from her before.

"I left something on your bed for you," she said as she tied up her pack. "I know you're just starting to master it, but I thought it might help you keep that Matsumoto kid in line if he starts to get out of hand. Just try to keep the bloodshed to a minimum, please, unless you're actually after enemy nin."

Having just finished the last of his dinner, he went to see what she was talking about. Lying on his bed was a kusari-gama.

She'd been teaching him how to use this weapon but hadn't let him take it with him for missions or team training, as if she didn't trust him to use it without her supervision. He picked up the sickle by its handle and noticed immediately that this one wasn't his mother's. Hers was typically sealed in one of her scrolls when she wasn't using it, its handle was old and well worn, and he was familiar with all its nicks and scratches. This one seemed to be brand new.

He picked up the chain carefully with his free hand and gave the weighted end an experimental swing. He then brought the weapon back out to the kitchen with a question in his eyes. She was already at the door and strapping on her own boots. "I figured it was about time you had one of your own," she said without looking at him, "now that I know you can use it without killing yourself. Remember, it's not your friend in a forest."

He thought with a cringe of the afternoon when she had demonstrated that particular lesson by taking him down to a bamboo grove on the training grounds. She'd told him to choose the weapon his opponent (she) would be using, and of course he'd chosen the sword – that had been the right answer every other time he'd had the kusari-gama. If he'd analyzed the situation and the terrain a little bit, in hindsight, he would have seen that the main advantage of the kusari-gama against the sword was almost completely nullified in an environment where there was no room to swing the chain.

"It's great. Thanks," he said, at a loss for better words as he stared at the thing in his hands.

She smiled at him and bent to kiss him on the forehead quickly before opening the door. "Just remember, no killing of teammates. I'll see you in a week or so."

He looked up and tried to think of something else to say – it felt like a moment where you were supposed to say something more than _thank you_. Even though he'd only had it in his hands a few minutes, he could tell that this was not a weapon you'd run into every day. If he knew anything about his mother, he knew she didn't buy a weapon unless she really believed it was worth the money. She'd probably gone through a lot of trouble to find this.

But what he ended up saying was, "Who was my father?"

She had actually already opened the door, but she froze in her tracks and turned back to him. For a minute she just stared at him without saying anything.

He didn't know exactly why he'd said it. Maybe because it had been on his mind these last few weeks, and with both of them having missions he hadn't had the chance to talk to her about it before. It didn't help that Neji was around half the time, either.

It was a rare moment when his mother was at a loss for words. He was afraid at first that he'd done something horribly wrong, and then he was embarrassed about the whole thing and wished she'd just leave for her mission, but the longer she stood in the doorway without answering him, the more he felt he had a right to know.

"It's that important to you?" she asked him.

Of course it was! Wouldn't anyone want to know who their father was? What was _wrong _with her? Neji had said almost the same thing. He felt like shouting at her, but he kept his mouth shut.

She was appraising him then, and he wondered what she was seeing – _who _she was seeing. "We'll talk when I get back," she said.

A moment later he was staring at the closed door.

He wished she had stayed there a second longer so that he could talk back to her. Yoshio didn't often argue with his mother, but in this case he knew exactly what he'd say. _Sure, maybe you'll talk to me when you get back. Or maybe you'll keep avoiding it like you always do._

He gripped the kusari-gama and clenched his teeth. She wasn't going to tell him? Fine. He'd figure it out on his own.

--


	4. Chapter 4

4. 

--

Tenten noticed the silhouette of her teammate against the moonlight as she approached him and could read a lot from his posture. Although it was the middle of the night and absolutely nothing had happened since they left Konoha, Rock Lee was clearly wide-awake and almost painfully alert, ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. Tenten grinned to herself. Even after working beside him for years, it never ceased to amaze her how Lee could have so much enthusiasm for even the most mundane shinobi duties. He'd been like that ever since they were kids.

"Can't sleep?" he asked softly, although his back was toward her and she had approached silently through the boughs of the trees. Tenten sighed as he turned his head to her and she saw the grave expression on his face. And in other ways, she reflected, he was nothing like the Lee she'd graduated the Academy with. He'd seen his share of shinobi duty, some of it particularly gruesome (Team Gai was frequently used for combat missions), and after losing both Gai-sensei and his beloved Sakura-san (who, in spite of multiple opportunities, had never returned his affections), he almost seemed like a different person. In public he acted like his old self – it seemed to make things easier for him. But alone, or with his team, the change was obvious.

Tenten made a soft landing next to him and sat down, facing the moon in the west like he was. "Can't sleep," she affirmed.

"You should still try to rest," he said. "Your watch isn't for another hour."

She shook her head. "I've got a lot on my mind. I'm going to be awake anyway. Might as well put it to good use."

The night air was thick and hazy, and there was a low drone of insects and frogs, cut through every now and then by the call of a bird. "You're not psyched at the idea of becoming a Hyuuga?" Lee said after a few minutes.

Tenten smiled. "No, it's not that." If only it were something that simple. The smile fell from her face swiftly when she stated the truth. "Yoshio started asking about his father."

The silence that followed brought to mind the plague of awkward silences and embarrassment that had filled and defined the first whole year of her life after she'd found out she was pregnant. She smiled ruefully. Some women glowed when you asked them about when their children were born. Tenten would have been just as happy if all memories of that time were erased.

"What are you going to tell him?" Lee asked soberly.

Tenten shook her head. "The truth."

It wasn't what she had to tell him, it was the question of _how _to tell him that was keeping her wide awake.

--

Lee sat with her for a long time after that, and she wondered how he could stand it, but Lee always managed to surprise her when he actually showed tact. He did turn in when his watch was supposed to be up, and she was left to try to bear the worrying thoughts running through her mind and train her ears to ignore the natural sounds of night. The problem was, she was a good enough shinobi now that it didn't require nearly enough thought, and her mind was left to wander back to the time she was trying to forget.

She had started to notice something wrong during one long mission outside of Fire country. There were a few surface similarities to the mission they were on now – the time of year, for instance, and the goal of capture – but that mission wasn't with team Gai. It was another team that had been put together for a very specific purpose, and out of the six members that had been sent to the far northern country where their targets were hiding, the only other close to her own age was Inuzuka Kiba. The mission leader, Kotaro, was someone she had worked with before and who had once been in ANBU. She respected him greatly. How humiliating that he was the first to find out.

She knew something was wrong as soon as she started to get sick. She assured her teammates she was fine, told them it was only something she ate, but she couldn't fool herself to miss the fact that there was an unfamiliar twinge of exhaustion in her muscles that told her she was pushing them, although she knew that with her conditioning that shouldn't be the case. She resolved not to let herself hold the team back, and since they were already far from home, her only option was to keep going unless she wanted to wreck the mission. The next time she felt herself getting sick she carefully hid it from Kotaro. She forced chakra through her limbs and kept up with the others. If they noticed her sweating more than normal, no one mentioned it. There was no Neji on that team to monitor her chakra levels.

She knew immediately what it all meant, of course. It was harder to hide her emotions than it was to hide the signs in her body.

It was after the battle – the only real fighting the entire mission entailed – and after their mission objective was achieved and the captive safely delivered that she allowed herself to really rest for the first time in weeks. They were cleaning up at the camp site, preparing for the journey home, and she sat down on a tree root far from the fire and let herself release her careful control of her chakra and feel the alien weariness creep into her. Kiba came over and asked her if she was all right. It was the first time they had spoken alone together for the entire mission. He surprised her, though, and she stood up too quickly, suddenly and inexplicably terrified. She saw the look of concern on his face and registered that he was trying to say something to her. And then she blacked out.

When she came to, most of the team was standing over her. Kotaro was looking for head wounds. He seemed confused.

She blamed it on chakra depletion and told them in her most professional deadpan to kindly give it a rest.

Kotaro wouldn't, though, and Kiba noticed her getting sick again, and although neither one of them said a word to her about it while they travelled back home, at the next village where they stopped to rest she was ordered to see the local physician. The woman was nosy and rude, asked if one of the other ninja on the team was the father, and apparently, as Tenten later discovered, couldn't keep her mouth shut. Tenten only had her own instinctive knowledge confirmed but resolved not to say a word about it to anyone. Her plan was shot to hell the next day when they started travelling again. Kotaro changed the formation to put himself next to her at the rear of the group, and it was patently obvious that he had slowed their pace. She confronted him about it when they stopped to break an hour earlier than usual. He didn't even need to tell her that he knew. She could tell just by the way he looked at her. Sadly. Like a teacher disappointed with his student.

He had treated her as an equal, once – or at least an equal of lower rank, someone who would eventually be on par with him. Now he treated her like someone who had failed him. And even though he wasn't that close to her, it stung. Even at the time, she understood that it was a sign of things to come. She saw a lot of that attitude from many different people she respected in the days after their return.

Torn between the unpleasant memories of those days that kept dredging themselves up and her desire to forget about them for good, Tenten wasn't even close to sleepiness when Neji relieved her of her watch several hours later. It was only through the solid shinobi training drilled into her by Gai-sensei that mandated she recover some of her strength through sleep that she was able to shut her eyes at all.

--

"You're trash."

Silence and movement. A twist, a jab, and Rikyu dodged the swinging weighted chain of his opponent's kusari-gama at the last second.

It only took him a moment to leap out of the way, but it brought him within whispering distance of Yoshio. Rikyu laughed softly, showing the other boy that he wasn't even winded. Yoshio ignored it. They were done playing with kawarimi and clones now – both of them had used up too much chakra this afternoon, and the fight had become an all-out taijutsu battle. Rikyu excelled at taijutsu. Unfortunately for him, he hadn't counted on Yoshio actually using the kusari-gama he'd been carrying around since their last mission – he'd thought it was just for show. That's the kind of thing his cousins would do to look tougher or stronger than they were. But Yoshio could actually use the thing. Rikyu begrudgingly admitted to himself that his opponent was even pretty good with it.

This was annoying to Rikyu, and in response he'd fallen back on his old habit of name-calling.

Yoshio landed unsteadily from a dodge and Rikyu's powerful kick swept through the air toward his chin – he thought Yoshio would be too winded to dodge it. But he realized quickly that he'd miscalculated when he heard the whizzing of the weighted chain again and just managed to pull his leg away before it was caught. By the time he'd recovered, Yoshio had his footing again and was in a defensive stance, the chain circling like a propeller in a wide arc beside him.

Rikyu grinned to cover his misgivings. "This is a waste of time. Why don't you just give up, loser?"

Yoshio didn't respond.

Rikyu felt hot anger bubble up in his chest. This kid was _nobody. _Rikyu was a Matsumoto. Where did this guy get off thinking he was even half as good?

For Rikyu, anger didn't come without action. He launched another attack with a suddenness that caught even Yoshio off guard.

Akiko observed the scene. Naruto, watching his students spar, had a slightly sheepish expression on his face, like he was suddenly realizing the enormity of what he had started. The boys hadn't really gotten along from the beginning and this battle wasn't helping anything.

The fact that nothing Rikyu said seemed to rile Yoshio at all was clearly grating on the shorter boy's nerves, and Akiko could tell he was just grabbing at phrases he thought would get a reaction. She only caught the last one.

"Son of a whore."

--

Not even the rhythm of the battle changed. As far as Akiko could tell, Yoshio was single-minded; it seemed like either he wasn't hearing any of the taunts or they literally had no effect on him. You had to watch with a sharp eye and you had to have paid attention to him for some time – several weeks, say, like Akiko had – to see that Yoshio was furious.

Akiko watched and listened to the interplay between her two teammates with detached interest. From their perspective she looked like she was innocently sitting under her tree and reading, but if they bothered to pay any attention to her at all, they would have noticed that she had been on the same page for over ten minutes now.

She was watching their spar surreptitiously but carefully. Well, it _was _kind of interesting, and anyway she had read this particular book twice before and knew it by heart. It was mostly stories of the First and Second Hokages and their many defeated foes. Those were the kinds of stories that Akiko liked best: dramatic and true with plenty of real-life gossip. But she always preferred new gossip to old.

The cause of this spar, as with all the other fights between the two boys, was Rikyu. Naruto-sensei had been trying to teach his genin team how to walk up trees using chakra. Akiko had read about this exercise – it was a famous one that the Second Hokage had come up with – but had never tried it herself. It kept her attention for fifteen minutes or so, at which point she hit a wall with her chakra manipulation skills. She couldn't get any farther than ten feet up the tree. She carelessly gave up on the exercise altogether when she saw what was happening with the boys.

Yoshio had made it halfway up his tree and was steadily progressing. Rikyu hadn't been doing so badly, but once he saw that Yoshio was beating him, he started going nuts – furiously running up his tree and springing back every time he fell. He wasn't making any advances, but he seemed to be building up a lot of energy. He was clenching his teeth and breathing through his nose, and the sharp, angry glances he threw at Yoshio caused him to misstep more than once. Yoshio stayed characteristically silent and continued working hard, and Rikyu got increasingly annoyed, which was apparent from the ever-more-vivid vocabulary he was using.

Naruto-sensei, although he'd been steadfastly oblivious to most of their other silent battles, finally seemed to pick up on what was going on and set them to spar against one another to "get it out of their systems." He hadn't noticed that Akiko wasn't even trying to climb her tree anymore.

Maybe it should bother her that her sensei didn't seem to notice her at all, she reflected.

Well, that was only to be expected. Sparring wasn't exactly her strong suit. It was, however, Naruto-sensei's specialty. He was in his element during an all-out battle that required minimal thinking and maximum strength. He enjoyed coaching his students in this, and he seemed perfectly ignorant of the fact that quite apart from "getting it out of his system," this whole exercise was just getting Rikyu more frustrated. For someone who was supposed to be an incredible ninja, Akiko mused, it was amazing how much Naruto didn't notice.

Although Rikyu had been even more vicious with his taijutsu lately and had actually started to gain on Yoshio in skill, the kusari-gama that Yoshio was now using stopped the other genin from even getting close. Akiko had a suspicion that Rikyu resented the weapon, since without it he would certainly be beating Yoshio.

Rikyu launched a sudden attack that was direct and powerful, landing his heel on Yoshio's head in a finishing move, only to find Yoshio vanish in a puff of smoke, replaced by a log. The kawarimi caught Rikyu completely off guard, and the moment of distraction was enough of a window for Yoshio to stage a solid attack. The time it took to maneuver the swinging chain would have made him vulnerable if he hadn't caught Rikyu off guard. Instead, Rikyu found himself caught from behind, the chain wound itself quickly around his ankles, and in a few seconds he was half-immobile, his back flat on the ground, staring up at his brown-eyed teammate with an expression of utter loathing. Neither boy said anything.

"Okay, ha ha, that was really good guys, but that's enough for now, right?" Naruto said uneasily. "Let's cool off some, huh? Who wants to go out for ramen?"

Akiko noticed the look of disbelief on Yoshio's face that clearly said, _ramen… __again?_

Rikyu, though, acted like he hadn't even heard his sensei. Free of the kusari-gama's chain, he was back on his feet but still staring hard at Yoshio. "You might be able to beat me now," he said with calmness that took Akiko completely by surprise, "but someday soon I'm going to surpass you. I'm going to be the first one in our class to make chunin, and you can't stop me."

Akiko's heart beat a little harder when she heard him say it. _This _was interesting. She quickly averted her gaze to her book when Rikyu got to his feet and stomped past her on his way back to the village with a stormy look on his face. Naruto-sensei watched him go with much confusion. "Hey, Rikyu? Hey, wait a second… wait up… hey, hang on, where are you going? Don't you want to get ramen with us?"

Rikyu was at an all-out sprint when Naruto started chasing after him. Akiko watched the orange jumpsuit disappear among the foliage and sighed quietly to herself. She couldn't believe how blind people could be. Everything was perfectly obvious to her, of course, but not everyone was so lucky as to have the kind of insight she did.

She settled happily into her book for a few minutes before she realized that she was alone on the training grounds with Yoshio. He was picking up the shuriken and kunai he had thrown during his spar with Rikyu.

Akiko watched him do this for a few seconds out of the corner of her eye before she took a deep breath, quietly closed her book, and got to her feet and started to help him. She started by yanking a kunai out of the tree that she had been leaning against. Neither boy had noticed, naturally, that it had just barely missed her head. Naruto-sensei hadn't seemed to notice, either.

She silently helped him gather his scattered weapons for a few minutes before she walked up to him and dumped them on the ground in front of him without ceremony. If he was surprised by this, then, Yoshio-like, he kept it to himself, and she got nothing but the usual cool brown eyes studying her carefully.

Without another word, they ended up walking back to the village together. Akiko had the feeling that Yoshio didn't entirely like this, but as with everything else, he put up with it without a whisper of complaint.

"You shouldn't let Rikyu get to you like that," Akiko said while they were walking.

She smiled to herself. He wouldn't be expecting that, because he was one of those guys who thought his emotions never showed through. But she knew better.

"He doesn't bother me," Yoshio said calmly. "He's just a bully."

"He does so bother you," Akiko stated. "I can see it, you know."

Yoshio did not respond to this.

"He _is _pretty stupid," Akiko went on, "but he's all talk. I'm sure he's not all that bad. That's just how he was brought up."

Yoshio gave her a look of utter skepticism.

"You _can _talk to me every once in a while, you know," she said pointedly. She waited patiently for him to take the hint – to no avail.

"…I didn't think you were the type to let him get to you," she tried again, after several minutes of stony silence from her teammate. "I thought you were better than that."

When he once again failed to respond verbally, she added, "Or maybe you think he's right? You think there's some truth to what he keeps saying about your family and your mother?"

That stopped Yoshio in his tracks, and the look he gave her was one that would have made someone who was actually shy hide behind a tree. But Akiko wasn't shy, not really. She just didn't especially like talking to people when she didn't feel like talking. She didn't lose her nerve when Yoshio looked at her. "So it's true?" she pressed on. "You really don't know who your father was?"

Yoshio moved forward again and looked away from her.

Akiko's eyes flew open. "It _is _true. Wow. This is kind of neat, like a mystery. I wonder how we could figure this out? They've got to keep birth records or something at the hospital… wouldn't it be cool if your Dad was someone like the Hoshikage or something? Just think of it! You could be related to a Kage! Or… or…"

"It's none of your business," Yoshio said, cutting off her train of thought.

"You don't _have _to be so mean to me all the time, you know," Akiko said.

"It has nothing to do with you," Yoshio said. "Stop sticking your nose in where it isn't wanted."

She felt cold in her stomach when he said this, and she slowed to a stop while he kept on walking. Her feet felt like lead suddenly, for some reason, and she felt the unexpected sting of tears in her eyes, although she knew better than to let it show. It didn't matter. He didn't seem to care if she were with him or not, or how she felt about what he said. Akiko watched his back as he walked away and breathed a deep breath to get herself under control.

Just because she was used to being ignored didn't mean she liked it.

--

Yoshio's mind was busy with thought while he walked home. What surprised him was that he was realizing how little he actually _knew_ abouthis mother. He knew her personality well enough – the way she'd procrastinate with cleaning everything but her hundreds of kunai, for instance – but concerning her actual life, he knew very little. He had been told that her parents were immigrants, and he knew a couple things about their country, but he would never have been able to find it on a map. He knew his mother knew the language of her parents, but he'd never heard her speak it. He knew she did the majority of her missions with the same team she'd been on since she was a genin herself, and he knew her teammates well – a little too well, in Rock Lee's case – but beyond that he really didn't know anything about her past or how she had gotten to be who she was. Come to think of it, he'd never even thought about how she learned to use all the weapons she was teaching him to use – he knew her parents hadn't been ninja. Had it been Maito Gai who taught her or someone else?

There was a lot he'd taken for granted. Even more he'd never bothered to wonder about.

He was so lost in thought that he didn't even notice Isamu sitting on the stairs of his apartment building before he was halfway past him. Before he'd seriously started training to be a ninja, he'd spent a lot of his spare time with Isamu, but since he'd become a genin he'd hardly seen the younger boy at all.

"Hey Yoshio!"

He looked around.

"Yoshio, are you busy? Are you just getting back from a mission?" The blonde boy leapt up and started to follow him up the stairs. He seemed to pick up on Yoshio's mood and his enthusiasm died a quick death. "So… did you have to fight anyone today?" he asked somberly.

"Um… no," Yoshio said. He was assuming that Isamu meant ninja from other villages, not ultraviolent ninja from one's own team. They hadn't gotten to fight any foreign ninja yet on any mission. They'd had some bad run-ins with housepets, but that was as violent as it got. "Today was just training. We didn't have a mission."

"Training? Hey, what's it like training with Uzumaki Naruto? Is he teaching you how to make a thousand kage bunshin?"

"No… not yet," Yoshio said. He didn't want to kill Isamu's illusions, but he had a suspicion that no one could do that but his sensei. "Training is hard work," he said. Well, that was true. Trying to keep up with Naruto's demands while dealing with his teammates was, in fact, hard work.

"Oh, so I bet you're tired," Isamu said, a little sadly.

Yoshio felt a sudden stab of guilt. He hadn't spent any time with his friend since leaving the Academy. Isamu didn't have any family of his own, so he really looked up to Yoshio like he was an older brother, and usually Yoshio didn't mind. But tonight he had other plans.

"Yeah, I'm really tired," he said. "We have a mission tomorrow too, and I've got to get ready for it."

"Oh, okay," Isamu said. "Well – hey, are you going to be around this weekend? Can you show me the kusari-gama?"

"Sure," Yoshio said. "As long as I don't have any missions."

A few minutes later, when he was walking up the stairs by himself, he felt a little bad about lying. Well, he hadn't lied exactly. But in any case Isamu wouldn't understand that Yoshio needed this time for more important things – namely, research.

--

Rikyu squinted his watery eyes and lifted the cool, wet towel to his face. He sighed when he felt the cold cloth contact his hot, bruised skin. He remembered when his mother used to do this, years ago. She had been killed during a routine scouting mission, unlucky enough to actually find something worth scouting but unskilled enough (so his uncle sometimes said) to defend herself long enough for backup to arrive. She had miscalculated the risk. It was an all-too-common mistake for shinobi. His uncle spoke of her death with regret, if not scorn, trying to impart the lesson to the younger Matsumotos. His father never spoke of her at all to his two sons.

Two _living _sons.

Rikyu had originally had three brothers. One of them had died when he was a baby during a chunin exam. Another had died two years ago, during a mission. The same mission had killed one of his second cousins.

There was definitely a distinct tradition in the Matsumoto family.

After he had fled from his fight with Yoshio and after his sensei had caught up to him, he had sat and listened to Naruto-sensei preach about teamwork for almost half an hour before a distraction in the form of Hyuuga Hinata's genin team had proven a lucky escape for him. He respected Naruto-sensei, since he knew that Naruto was a jounin and one who had lived through events that had killed many of his equals, but he couldn't stomach the ideas that Naruto was trying to shove down his throat. Protecting others? That just wasn't what being a shinobi was _about._ None of them understood that. No one on his team came from a clan like the Matsumoto. The Matsumoto understood what made a ninja village work. It was pain, fear, sweat, and blood, all directed toward the objective of the mission. That's what they were all about.

His father was the best one of them, naturally. He wasn't the heir to the clan leadership, but he was easily the Matsumotos' best ninja, so Rikyu and his brother had a lot to live up to. Both of them took this very seriously. There was nothing better than being able to tell their father about the battles they had won – even better if the odds were against them from the start. Their father always had a smile for those stories, and even though he barely spoke to them otherwise he could always spare a few minutes to talk about strategy or technique, what jutsu worked best in what situation, and why their opponents had failed.

Of course, when they lost, the man just looked at them sadly and said something like, "You'll work harder and do better next time." And then he would finish his meal or his newspaper – whatever was in his hands at the moment – and go back to the world in his head, and the conversation would be over.

Years ago, when Rikyu's mother was alive, his father had been a different man and was as loud and animated as the other Matsumoto men when they spoke about their work. Over the years it seemed he'd quieted down slowly, and now he was almost silent and had a tendency not to notice the things around him, to the point of often ignoring his sons entirely. Rikyu and his brother were constantly fighting for his attention, and their stories of ninja battles were the only thing that ever _got _his attention.

His brother had pounded him as soon as he'd gotten home today. He hadn't tried to make an excuse this time, he'd just caught Rikyu at a vulnerable moment and set in on him, and Rikyu was in no place to defend himself, especially since the spar with Yoshio had sapped all his chakra. So now, as a result, Rikyu was bleeding from his crown, and the blood hadn't slowed for more than five minutes.

Rikyu clenched his eyes. _I am going to be stronger than him. I am going to beat my brother. I am going to be stronger than all of them, and I'll beat Yoshio, too._

He winced, sponging the blood off of his forehead. He knew he was getting stronger. If he could just concentrate, he thought, he might stand a chance of beating his brother the next time they fought.

When the bleeding had stopped and the blood had clotted, he got up abruptly and left the Matsumoto compound, heading off to the practice grounds that were removed from his family's property. He had a few moves he wanted to work on.

--

Akiko put her hands in her lap, then back on the futon on either side of her lap, then in her lap again, clenched together. One of her baby cousins – her half-brother, in actuality, she suspected, but that was another story – was crying and her aunt was trying to shush it. Akiko was waiting for the moment when the kid finally shut up and she could have her aunt's full attention.

Akiko couldn't even understand why her aunt had chosen to have so many children. She certainly couldn't afford them, as she constantly reminded Akiko. Akiko couldn't imagine being the kind of woman her aunt was, living only to support her family and earning nothing for herself – not strength or respect, not even love. Even the women in Akiko's novels at least got some love out of the bargain. Her aunt got nothing but pain, work, and more babies. Akiko didn't plan on having any of those herself, ever. She saw the results every morning, and it was enough to make her swear celibacy for life.

It was sometimes hard to get her aunt's attention. In her defense, the woman had half a dozen children to look after, including her own four, Akiko, and another one of Akiko's cousins, and her aunt didn't really have enough money to take care of half of them. Akiko bit her lip thinking about this – what she was about to do would certainly help that problem, but for some reason that didn't make any of the enormous guilt go away. Maybe it was because Akiko knew she was one of the two sane, mature people left in this household. The other one was her aunt.

Finally – _finally _– the poor kid seemed to fall asleep. Akiko unclenched her hands slightly when she heard her aunt pour herself a cup of tea and sit down at the kitchen table.

Akiko got to her feet and walked out to the kitchen. She didn't have far to go – there were only two rooms in the house, after all. She saw her aunt look up as soon as she was in the doorway. There were dark circles under the woman's watery, unfocused eyes, and Akiko suddenly realized that the liquid in the cup in front of her was not tea. After staring at her a moment, her aunt said irritably, "Well, go on. You want to say something, don't you?"

It took all her concentration not to bite her lip. The truth was, although the woman hadn't been exactly _nice _to her since her mother had left her to be Akiko's guardian (Akiko's mother had disappeared several years ago, and she still didn't know exactly why, although there were several unsavory theories), this was the only family she'd ever really had. Even when her mother was still in Konoha, her aunt had been the one who cooked for them and cared for them. Akiko had been eating food made on this woman's stove for as long as she could remember. And now…

"I just wanted to say goodbye," Akiko said.

That got her aunt's attention fast enough. The woman swung her head unsteadily at her niece and her brow creased deeply. "Where are you going now? Another mission?"

"No. I saved up my mission money and got my own place."

Her aunt's eyes were sharp and piercing. She didn't say anything for about a minute, and Akiko took the time to mentally melt into the floor while reminding herself that it was the legal, fair, and responsible thing to do, and even though her aunt had been her guardian before, it meant nothing now that she was officially a genin.

Her aunt turned back to the cup in front of her. "I wondered what you were up to all this time," she said, slurring the words a little, as if she didn't even care to act sober anymore. "Good riddance. You'll turn out as bad as your mother, but I won't have to deal with you. Go on, get out of here."

Akiko breathed once through her nose and nodded. This was how she'd thought it would turn out. Honestly, this was how she'd _hoped _it would turn out: without argument. Her fingers clenched around the strap of the bag on her back, which contained all her worldly possessions that couldn't rightly be claimed by her aunt or uncle. "I'll stop by," she said feebly.

Her aunt sneered at her. "Don't bother. Who wants to see you? Go on, I said. Ninja. Ha. You'll probably get killed within a week like the rest of those fools."

Akiko pretended not to hear this. "Goodbye," she said.

She received no answer. Her aunt wouldn't look at her now. Akiko breathed slowly to regain her concentration, then firmly stepped out the kitchen door and into the street.

She wouldn't go back. Ever.

Even if she failed all her missions, lost genin status, and couldn't afford the little apartment anymore, she knew that from here on out she was on her own.

Strangely enough, she found she didn't like that idea at all. So instead of thinking about it, she pulled a book out of her pocket and started to read it while she walked. And when she realized that she already knew this book by heart she took the time to wonder about Yoshio's father instead.

--

The night was hot. The air conditioner finally kicked on and began its low drone, creating enough noise to drown out the crickets outside. Yoshio noticed it peripherally. For the last hour he had been focused on the pile of photos on his bed. He'd tried to look at them like an outsider, drawing conclusions from the evidence in front of him rather than subjective experience. It wasn't easy, but he felt like he was starting to understand, somewhat, who his mother was.

The weapons in her closet he knew as well as the chipped plates and glasses stacked drying in the sink, because he had grown up around weapons, from the blunt wooden shuriken he was told he chewed as a toddler to the kusari-gama that was hanging in his room even now. Weaponry was a way of life for his mother. For him, too. Other than that, as far as evidence concerning her past, there was only this: a handful of photos. These ones weren't like the ones on the walls, which were all neat little portraits: Team Gai at its inception, the three genin and stridently posing jounin all in a line; Team Gai when they all had made chunin; Tsunade on the day she was made Hokage; and other photos like that. There were also an inordinate number of pictures of Yoshio in various stages of life, from fat babyhood to his first day at the Academy.

The ones in the pile in front of him were not as neat. These were the personal photos she hadn't bothered to put on the wall but that she'd kept nonetheless. He saw a picture of Sakura, Lee, and Naruto-sensei, the latter with his face obscured by the photographer's thumb. There was a picture of the legendary Kakashi with Maito Gai, clearly unwillingly in the same frame together. There was one of a very young Neji washing dishes in a stream and looking thoroughly annoyed. A lot of these pictures seemed taken almost by accident, as if the subjects hadn't known there was a camera anywhere near. One was Yamanaka Ino and Haruno Sakura, Ino holding a toddler Yoshio and smiling toothily for the camera. Yoshio thought his young self just looked confused and slightly annoyed.

A lot of them seemed to show his mother in ways he hadn't seen her before, but one of them stood out. For the most part it was a portrait like many of the ones on the walls of the apartment. There were five people in it: his mother, Neji, and three ninja from another country. Two of these he recognized easily. The first was the Kazekage; the second was the Kazekage's sister. In the photo, his mother stood next to her and both of the kunoichi looked unnervingly alert. His mother had told him about the time she went up against this woman in her first chunin exam and met with grim defeat as well as the many fights that she herself had picked with the Suna kunoichi after that. His mother was not content to lose to anyone. He remembered another thing she'd tried to explain to him once: _after so many battles, your greatest rivals become your friends. That's when you know you're a shinobi. _

He had met this kunoichi before. Temari. There was something not completely unlike friendship that had formed between her and his mother, although he couldn't figure out how, since his mother seemed to hate her. He recognized the antagonism, but they were rivals and friends at the same time. Looking at this picture, he realized again that he really knew very little about his mother. This photo had clearly been taken in Suna. Why had she kept it? She and Temari were off to the side, Neji and the Kazekage were in the center, and at the other side there was another ninja, one he didn't know at all. His face was covered in strange lines of paint, and he wore bulky scrolls on his back. His mother looked like she was still a teenager in this picture. He knew – from having done the math – that she was a teenager when he was born.

Could this other ninja be his father?

It didn't seem likely, but after going through the pile of pictures, he didn't see any other candidates. He was certain beyond a doubt that the Kazekage was not his father. There were plenty of members of the Rookie 9 in these photos, and he knew his mother's team was closely connected to that group, but Neji's comment from earlier seemed to rule them all out as well. So who was this other Suna ninja? What kind of relationship had he had with Yoshio's mother? And why wasn't this picture on the wall?

Why was it that his mother had told him about the Kazekage and Sabaku no Temari, but never about this other ninja? Or rather – why did this Sand ninja seem to stand so prominently in this picture alongside the Kazekage and his mother's team, and why had she kept this picture? What was his importance? Yoshio just had a feeling that this person meant more than the picture was letting on. The paint made his face look grim, and his costume dark and ridiculous. There was something slightly terrifying about his smile.

Who else could be his father? There weren't any other faces among the few pictures that Yoshio didn't readily recognize. He'd only seen the Kazekage once, a few years ago when they'd had the chunin exams in Konoha again and the Kazkeage had come to watch.

Of course, he hadn't really _met _the Kazekage…

But knowing what he knew about the man, it seemed impossible that he'd had a relationship of any kind with Yoshio's mother. Even the stories about the Kazekage were unreasonably bloody – he'd heard his mother talk about him before without emotion. But this other ninja – who knew? To Yoshio, he was the only mystery face among the many in his mother's private collection of photos. That had to mean something, right? Yoshio didn't know whether his suspicions were unfounded or not, but he had the weirdest feeling in his gut when he stared at the strange ninja's picture. And he'd heard that there had been a special relationship between Sand and Leaf ever since the Godaime Kazekage had taken office. They were allies. Was that why no one ever mentioned his father? He was just from a different village? Or maybe this man was dead?

He picked that picture out of the pile and kept it separate from the rest. He was going to have to find out more about this Sand ninja, whoever it was.

--

Naruto had a sheepish smile on his face after his student disappeared. Hinata, who had caught him by surprise, focused all her energy on not blushing. It had taken her years to achieve this level of composure in his presence, but with concentration she could be as stoic as any other Hyuuga, even around Uzumaki Naruto.

Her students had been working on their scouting – specifically, interpersonal communication while scouting. It was just pure coincidence that Naruto and the Matsumoto boy had happened to be where they were when they were, providing an ideal target. Pure, pure coincidence. Hinata hadn't seen them from a distance and sought them specifically at all.

Well, some childhood habits were harder to kill than others.

Even though her team had broken rank for the day – it had been sunset already – she had lingered there on the pretense of apologizing for the interruption. Inevitably, she was caught on the receiving end of Naruto's long rumination about his team after the Matsumoto boy had run off. "Not what I thought they'd be," is not something Naruto would say. It was in his nature to be unfailingly optimistic. Hinata, though, could see through everything he was trying to say.

"They're good kids, it's just hard at the beginning for everyone, right? I remember when I was a genin, I was lucky just to know what I was doing half the time – I wouldn't have had a clue if Sakura and Sasuke hadn't been on a higher level than me. And they're good kids – Yoshio has a lot of skill, and Rikyu has tons of potential. He just, you know, with the sparring, he gets carried away… but they all eat ramen together, with me. Even after a mission. After _every _mission."

Naruto was clearly miserable in spite of what he was trying to say – and it didn't take a Hyuuga to see it. Hinata suspected it had much more to do with the team he had recently lost for good than the team he had recently gained. She started to say so without thinking it through. "It must be hard for you to start from scratch with a new team, after…"

After losing Sakura. That's what she had meant to say. But the words froze on her tongue. She suddenly felt that she had said too much.

Naruto, though, just shrugged. Hinata was surprised to see how well he covered up his grief. After only a moment of darkness the smile returned to his face "They're good kids," he said again, sticking to his guns. "Every team has to start somewhere, right?"

--

Yoshio slammed the button on his alarm clock and rolled out of bed two seconds later. He was practicing waking up in a hurry so that he could spring into action from a dead sleep in moments like his mother could. He didn't really need to hurry through his morning routine, but he did anyway, just for practice. He would be early to the meeting point, but he would use the time to practice environmental observation.

He descended the stairs of his apartment building as usual, but when he got to the bottom he was surprised to see Akiko sitting on a bench on the street just outside his apartment, clearly waiting for him. He didn't even stop to wonder how she knew where he lived. He ran up to her straightaway, assuming there was some emergency that brought her there. But then he saw that she was reading another one of her books. She wouldn't be reading if she were in a hurry to see him.

He noticed her hair was in a long braid down her back, her usual green dress was replaced by more standard shinobi attire. Before he could speak to her, she'd slammed her book shut and looked up at him. "I think I know who your father is," she said without preamble.

Yoshio was startled. "What? Who?" he said before he could stop himself.

"Inuzuka Kiba."

--


	5. Chapter 5

5. 

--

It took Yoshio a moment to shake himself out of his daze of surprise. What was she saying to him? Inuzuka _Kiba_? "Yeah right…" he said, moving on.

"How do you know I'm wrong unless you hear me out?" she said.

"It can't be him," Yoshio stated calmly. Neji had said it was someone he'd never met, and he'd definitely met Kiba.

…Unless Neji's offhand comment had really been just that, Yoshio thought, pausing.

Unless what he meant was that he'd never known that he was his father when he met him…

This was getting ridiculous. Yoshio shook himself and started walking again. "It isn't him, and what are you doing here, anyway? I told you, this is none of your business."

"You say that a lot," she said and stood up, brushing her dress briefly before leaping to his side. She seemed determined to walk next to him and skipped forward a little to match his pace.

"It's a fact. This is none of your business."

"Don't you even want to hear me out?"

"Not really," he replied. He wondered why she was so obsessed with him all of a sudden. She wasn't going to be one of those kunoichi who fell for their genin teammates, was she? As if he didn't have enough to deal with.

"You don't even care who your father is?" she asked.

Something about the way she said it really irked him. "Look," he said. "This is my family stuff, okay? It's not that I don't like you, but it's personal. You're just my teammate. Don't you remember what they taught us at the Academy? Ninja shouldn't form close bonds with other ninja, especially their teammates. It can interfere with our missions."

"You don't really believe _that,_ do you?"

"Of course I do."

"What about your mother's team?"

"They're different," he said, brushing off her argument without a pause.

"Look," she said irritably, "I promise I'm not trying to _bond _with you or anything. I just heard something and I thought you might want to know. If you want to keep being so pig-headed about everything, that's fine with me, and if I find proof that he's your father I'll just keep it to myself." Her voice had become shrill by the time she came to the last words.

Yoshio looked at her with surprise. He hadn't known her very long, but for as long as their acquaintance had gone on he'd never heard her talk to anyone like that. Akiko was slightly red in the face, and if he wasn't very mistaken her eyes were starting to get just a little bit wet. His inner shinobi pointed out that she wasn't going to get very far in the ranks if she was going to be as sensitive as that.

She took a deep breath and became a little calmer. "I'll stop bothering you if you hear me out," she said.

Yoshio clenched his teeth with annoyance and silently gave in.

--

The unwritten and unspoken protocol went like this: if you were going to get away with a relationship with your teammate and continue to do missions together, you couldn't so much as touch each other during a mission. It was common sense. You should avoid expressing any emotional connection with your teammates during a mission regardless of your relationship during down time, because for shinobi the danger that any personal connection would be used against you was always present. Additionally, topics of conversation should be limited to those concerning the mission and should be kept cryptic.

Tenten knew the rules, but she rarely followed them to the letter. Neji had stuck to them longer, but nowadays he was following her example. "What is it?" he asked her. They had stopped in the middle of the River Country forest to eat lunch and Lee was several yards away doing one-handed push-ups.

Tenten gnawed on a piece of jerky. "Something's definitely off," she said. "We haven't seen traces of a single person anywhere in this forest, and given that this is such a sensitive border, it's making me paranoid."

"It's normal for this part of the forest," Neji said. "It's traditionally labeled no-man's-land." What he said was strictly true. Historically, this area – without so much as a single decent bath to be had in it, Tenten reflected ruefully – had gone back and forth between Kaze and Ame over the years. Right now it was supposedly the domain of Kaze, and this mission had been officially cleared by Kazekage, but that didn't mean there shouldn't be Ame ninja at least on the periphery.

"Don't tell me you aren't as paranoid as I am," she said. "You've got to admit, it's weird."

"It is unusually quiet," he said, "but I am more worried about our target not making an appearance. I am beginning to doubt our intel. But that is not what I was asking about. You've barely said a word since we left the village. Are you mad at me?"

Tenten smiled to herself. Neji was, and always would be, about as subtle as a hammer in all matters personal. He didn't like half-truths or gentle lies or sidestepping of sensitive issues. "No, I'm not mad at you," she said, letting the inner smile creep out. "Can't a girl have any time to think by herself?"

"What is it?" he repeated, deactivating his Byakugan.

She took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. "How on earth do I explain to him how he got here? How do I even start to tell that story? I just don't know…"

Neji didn't say a word at first, and the only sounds were the birds in the trees and Lee breathily counting his pushups.

"You don't help, of course," Tenten said. "Thanks to you he's got this father image all built up… You know, sometimes I think he takes more after you than he does me," she added.

"What do you mean?"

"It sounds odd, but it's true. No, I'm not kidding. I started to notice it one day when Yoshio was little, five or six." Tenten ran a hand across the bottom of her sweaty forehead protector and took a swig from her water bottle before going on. "We were out on one of the training fields – Lee was trying to give him his first taijutsu lesson, remember? We were sitting down in the shade for a break and Lee goes off on one of his speeches on Youth with a capital Y. I just remember looking over at you two and… you had the exact same expression on your faces." She paused. "He picks up a lot from you."

"I spent a lot of time with him when he was young."

"I know. Trying to stay away from your wife. I remember."

He grimaced very slightly. Mentions of Neji's aborted marriage were probably the only thing that would get him to react like that. But before they could get into any pain-inducing memories of that fiasco, Lee finished his calisthenics and hopped over to them. "Yosh! I don't know about you two, but I am eager to be moving again!" he announced clearly.

But his right hand was in front of his stomach, communicating in one silent gesture one of the code signals they had developed years ago: _we are being watched._

--

The mission that day was over much earlier than usual (owing to the fact that Rikyu had decided it was a competition with Yoshio to see who could paint faster), and to celebrate the fact that they'd taken care of a single task in mere hours rather than an entire day, Naruto gave them the rest of the day off. After Rikyu had made his usual stormy departure, Akiko turned to Yoshio expectantly. "So, want to go now?"

"What? Want to go where?"

"The Inuzuka farm, of course."

He stood there with his arms crossed and stared her down. Akiko looked annoyed. "Well, how _else _would we find out if he's your father?"

As much as he hated to concede a point to her, Yoshio didn't really have an answer for that.

"I heard one of my new neighbors talking about it yesterday. Lucky coincidence, I guess. She was gossiping about Inuzuka Kiba and his new girlfriend or something, and she said he'd gone out with every kunoichi in Konoha at least once. So I asked her if he'd ever gone out with your mother, and she said she was almost positive about it. And then I asked her if it was before or after you were born... well, she wasn't sure, but you get the idea."

Yoshio looked extremely skeptical. "She never talks about him at all. It doesn't make any sense. You can't just listen to a piece of gossip and think that…"

"It makes perfect sense! I can just picture it. They probably had a long, torrid affair, and then maybe she refused to join the Inuzuka clan or something and had a fight with him and he's an Inuzuka… you know, Inuzuka guys, they're not like normal men, she probably thought he'd be a bad influence on you… But she didn't want you to know you had a clan, so she… or maybe she just thought you wouldn't understand."

"This is a bad idea," Yoshio said with a sinking feeling. "We can't just walk up to him and ask him if he's my father."

"I can't think of a better way to get an answer," she said. She added, "I'll do all the talking if you want."

"What are you going to say?" he asked, perplexed.

She shrugged.

Yoshio thought that this was a ridiculous lack of strategy, especially from someone who was supposed to be a ninja, and had no doubt that this plan would fail terrifically and probably cause him a lot of embarrassment, but even so, when she walked away from him, he found himself following. They didn't say another word to each other all the way through Konoha. He nodded to a team of classmates they ran into when they crossed the main street and when he looked back in her direction he saw that she had pulled out another one of her little books and buried her face in it. For the first time he wondered how on earth she managed to walk and read at the same time without slowing down or bumping into everyone else on the street.

Just when he thought she'd forgotten about him and their "mission" completely, she quickly pocketed the book and looked up. "It's this way," she said, turning down a different street.

"Why do you know where the Inuzuka farm is?"

"How come you don't?" she asked, shrugging again. "I know where pretty much everything is in Konoha," she added in an off-handed way. "By the way, that's him."

He stopped short in surprise. They were just off the main road in a neighborhood near the open-air market where there were a few restaurants with outdoor tables. Akiko was looking toward one of these tables, where Inuzuka Kiba was seated between two kids. The girl was older, probably already in the Academy, the boy a few years younger. Both of them had the Inuzuka tattoos.

"See, those are the trademark Inuzuka tattoos. I read that they're supposed to represent the bloody fangs of this wolf demon that they use as their clan totem, and there's this whole story about…"

Yoshio raised an eyebrow at her.

"Don't look at me like that just because I'm better informed," Akiko grumbled. "Anyway, there he is. So let's go."

Yoshio felt apprehension seize him. "This is crazy," he said. "There's no proof."

"Well of course there isn't any proof. If there were proof you wouldn't need me to lead you here," she hissed. "You want to meet your father, don't you?"

Yoshio looked away when Kiba raised his head and almost looked at him, but he kept staring at the group out of the corner of his eye while the reality of the situation seemed to hit him in the face. Inuzuka Kiba seemed like a nice guy. He was joking around with the little girl, making her laugh while he ate his food. "If he were my father," Yoshio stated, "he definitely would have said something to me before now."

"Maybe your mother asked him not to. Who knows?"

"This is… weird." He paused. "This is a bad idea. There has to be another way to find out."

"One minute you're dying to know and the next you're too afraid to ask him," Akiko said, rolling her eyes.

"Come on, don't _you _think he would have said something? If he's my father, he must know it."

"Not necessarily," Akiko said in her naturally-I-know-more-than-you tone. "My book on the major Konoha clans says Inuzukas have a different family structure than anyone else in the shinobi nations. It's because their ancestors migrated from this really backwards country up north, and their clan heads were so against the idea of patriarchy that even though they had developed many of their fighting techniques in ninja style they totally were not interested in following any of the Kages, because the Kage tradition is based on a strict patriarchal structure, but then the First Hokage founded Konoha and told them that..."

"What does that have to do with Kiba being my father?" Yoshio interrupted her.

"Aren't you interested in your family history?"

Yoshio took a deep breath through his nose. "The point I'm trying to make is that I don't know yet if it is my family history."

"Well, sorry if you don't like him, but it makes sense. Your mother used to go out with Kiba, and clan traditions are only passed down through mothers in the Inuzuka so it would make sense that you don't have a dog or anything…" Suddenly Akiko giggled.

Yoshio narrowed his eyes at her. "What?"

"It's just… the idea of _you, _living like an Inuzuka. It's kind of funny."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know, you're just so quiet and serious and…"

"Hey, Yoshio, is that you?"

Yoshio looked up suddenly. Kiba had spotted him.

--

She was seventeen years old and she lived alone. She didn't have a boyfriend. She never had boyfriends. She didn't have _time _for boyfriends - she was a jonin. A new jonin, at that, and a young jonin. And even though it was the middle of the afternoon and she should have been training or getting ready for her next assignment, she was stretched out on her bed and staring up at the ceiling.

Six hours ago, a medic-nin at the hospital, after having given her a thorough exam, had driven the nail into her own personal coffin by issuing the standard order to the Hokage that she wasn't allowed to take any missions until the matter was resolved.

That was a funny way to put it, Tenten had reflected.

She'd lain down as soon as she got home and hadn't moved since. She felt nausea start to creep up on her, and she fought it back, not wanting to move, trying to concentrate on emptying her mind of all its muddled thoughts. She was interrupted, however, by a knock at the door.

She swallowed hard to choke back the bile, rolled off the bed, and carefully straightened her clothing, and when she opened the front door she was faced with a cool and distant Neji.

She realized right away that this would be the first time he'd seen her since her mission with Kotaro. She could read him, she thought, as well as, if not better than, anyone in his family could, but she couldn't tell what was going on in his mind right now. His face was more perfectly blank than she had ever seen it before. "Just come in," she said, turning her back on him, too mentally tired to pick apart the riddle.

He did. He shut the door behind him. She went to the kitchen to make tea; after all, even warriors had manners. She brought him his cup and sat down with him in her tiny living room. There was a lamp and a couch and a chair there and little room for much else, because it was the home of someone who didn't bother with decorations. Someone whose entire life consisted of missions and training. Neji sipped his tea quietly and she sipped hers. The silence hung in the room like an unclean fog.

She hadn't told him yet, but it appeared that he had heard.

She trusted Kotaro and Kiba, but somehow the others on that mission team had found out. She barely knew them off duty. Apparently they either hadn't realized that it was a secret or had so little respect for her that her privacy was not valued. By the way other ninja looked at her in the street the day after their return, she was embarrassed to realize that half of Konoha already knew, and by nightfall that day she was sure the rest had been told. You couldn't kill good gossip like this. Team Gai, though young, was still one of the best units of their generation. In a ninja village, that's what made you popular.

"How long have you known?" he finally asked. She noticed with a sinking heart that he wasn't looking at her – he was staring directly into his tea. Nausea crept up on her again.

"I found out during the mission," she confessed.

He nodded as if he had expected it. When he turned his eyes to her, she felt her heart falling out through her stomach. He had the same kind of expression she had seen on Kotaro's face. Sadness. Disappointment. A look that said, _I thought I knew you._

It was so obvious that he had expected more of her, and she had failed him.

She swallowed the rest of her tea in one gulp.

She stood up and took her empty glass to her tiny kitchen. It was too much for her to sit near him any longer.

"Who?" he asked, his voice deadly cold.

"That's none of your business," she answered curtly.

"I've already been accosted by five different people," he said. "I at least want to know who I can legitimately blame for this."

She looked back at him, curious against her will.

"Lee, Gai-sensei, Kotaro, my uncle, and the Hokage," he said. "All within the span of two days. I don't think any of them believed me."

She held his gaze for a few more moments before looking back down at her hands in the sink. So Gai and Lee had heard also. Wonderful. "I'm seeing the Hokage tomorrow morning," she said. "I'll make it clear to her at least that you have nothing to do with it."

She had started washing dishes. When she heard him stand up, she hoped he was heading for the door. He wasn't. He came to her side instead. "Tenten," he said, "it's not me that I'm worried about."

Anyone standing that close made her uncomfortable; that it was Neji didn't help. "Please just leave me alone," she blurted out, turning her head and locking gazes with him.

"I want to know who it is so that I can find him and kill him," Neji said, sounding reasonable but irate.

"I don't need your help and I don't need you to protect me and I _certainly_ don't need you to defend my honor," she said.

He looked like he wanted to argue with her about this, but he didn't. Neji didn't say a word, and Tenten just looked away from him. She'd thought that she'd never feel as humiliated as she did during that mission with Kotaro. She knew now that she was wrong.

"Please leave," she said. She grabbed the empty cup out of his hands and started to wash it. After a minute or so, she saw him walk away in her peripheral vision and heard the door close. She was nearly certain she could sense his chakra just outside of it for several minutes afterwards.

When she was convinced that he was gone, she put the cups on the rack in the sink to dry, wiped off her hands, and walked back through her stark apartment into her bedroom, where she lay down on her bed again without disturbing the covers. She was hungry but didn't want to eat, and she was exhausted, but it would have been impossible to go to sleep.

She'd never wanted anything like this. She'd never wanted to be anything but a great kunoichi. And even if she _had _wanted something like this, she certainly hadn't wanted it to happen this way, so very unplanned.

Not that she'd ever stopped to consider who she would have wanted to get pregnant with. Not that the thought had ever crossed her mind.

And the worst part was that she couldn't just end it – now that everybody knew. Well, she could. Abortion wasn't illegal in Konoha. Still, in a ninja village whose strength was principally dependent on its numbers, it was definitely taboo. She could have an abortion. Everyone would know it, but she could still have an abortion. If she did, at least she wouldn't have to break up her own team for long – pregnant kunoichi weren't working kunoichi – and really, her teammates were the only ones that mattered to her.

She still wasn't certain about what she was going to do, or when. Just thinking about it made her nauseous again.

--

Yoshio found himself sitting at a table with Kiba, Akiko, and the two Inuzuka kids – Kiba having invited them to sit down under the pretense that they had ordered too much food or something. Someone had shoved a pair of chopsticks into his hand and Kiba had bought both him and Akiko cups of tea. Kiba had an easy, natural generosity and a genial sort of air about him – he flirted with the waitress and got her to bring extra plates, and the kids on either side of him didn't seem interested in anything but eating. The weird toothy smirk never fell from the man's face. Yoshio wasn't sure how he felt about the idea that this might be his father. It wasn't too terrible, actually – he could think of worse. (Lee, for instance.)

"How's your mom, Yoshio?" Kiba asked.

Akiko's chopsticks had been searching through her rice seeking any piece of food that hadn't been touched by ginger, but at Kiba's words she stopped abruptly. Yoshio could feel her attention shifting to him. 

He felt uneasy. He didn't know why, but he really didn't like the fact that Kiba was asking him this. "She's on a mission. With Lee… and Neji," he said, accidentally emphasizing the latter name.

Kiba smiled amiably. "She teach you how to use nunchaku yet? She nearly killed me once with nunchaku." The boy to his right raised his bowl to his chin and started shoveling rice directly into his mouth. Kiba had to pat him on the back when he nearly choked on it. "Easy there, partner."

"Yeah, she's taught me nunchaku," Yoshio said as he stared at the boy and wondered if they were related.

He was at a loss for what to say next, and Kiba and the kids seemed to be busy eating. Kiba was as enthusiastic about it as the kids were, and he was getting speckles of curry on the table. Yoshio tried his best not to wrinkle his nose in disgust. "I recognize you from that night at the ramen stand," Kiba said to Akiko. "You clocked the guy next to you pretty good. Wasn't he your teammate?"

"Matsumoto Rikyu. Yes, he's on Naruto-sensei's team too. Inuzuka-san," Akiko said formally, placing her bowl on the table, and switching immediately to her bookworm attitude, "I've been doing some research on the different clans of Konoha, and since the Inuzuka _are _one of the most notable, I was wondering if you would mind if I asked you a couple things."

Kiba looked mildly stunned. "Um… I probably shouldn't be spilling secrets to outsiders, but I couldn't tell you anything you wouldn't see in a couple years anyway," he said, patting the girl beside him on the back. She was a few years younger than Yoshio and Akiko. She grinned sheepishly. "Kinue here's going to try for genin soon. Watch out – you might take the chunin exam with her someday."

Yoshio felt briefly embarrassed about the fact that this would probably never happen. At least not with his team.

"I read that women are always clan leaders in the Inuzuka and always the ones to pass down the family name. Is that true?" Akiko asked, templing her fingers as she leaned her elbows on the table.

"Weeeellll, yes and no," Kiba said. "It used to be that way, but now it's more who was born first. If my sister had been a boy she'd still be in charge after my mom steps down. Actually, if she'd been anything like me, they'd probably go with one of my cousins… But yeah, it doesn't matter if she ever gets married, her kids'll always be Inuzukas."

"But if the name is passed down through the women, what happens if _you_ ever get married and have kids?"

Yoshio blushed for her. Akiko betrayed no emotion but curiousity.

Kiba stared at her for a second before laughing out loud. "Man, you're not shy, are you? Well, uh… Inuzuka men, they _sometimes _do that, but …"

"What?" Akiko prodded. Yoshio was now blushing so hard he actually felt like he was starting to sweat.

Kiba didn't look any more comfortable, but he seemed happy at the attention. "When an Inuzuka guy gets married… his kids could go either way, you know? They probably wouldn't grow up on the farm, though, so it'd be hard if they wanted to learn any of our traditions."

"What if an Inuzuka man had kids without getting married?"

Yoshio was so embarrassed by now it was all he could do to stay in his seat. He wasn't sure if he wanted to kick Akiko under the table for being so rude or get out of there as fast as he could, but he stayed where he was and kept eating instead, although his movements were rather robotic.

Kiba's grinned widened. "Yeah, that does happen from time to time. Those kids are almost never Inuzukas. Still, you can always tell where they came from." He winked at her.

"How can you tell?"

He laughed. "Easy. Hey Kenta, open your mouth."

The little boy next to him looked up from his dinner and did something disgusting. Kiba laughed again. "Okay, chew your food, swallow your food, _then _open your mouth."

He did, and then he pulled his lips back in a mock snarl and they could finally see what Kiba was talking about. Akiko stood up and leaned over the table to get a better view, but it was clear to Yoshio even where he sat.

"See? He can't be anyone but an Inuzuka with canines like that. They'll get even bigger as he gets older, too. At home we say that the Hyuuga have eyes, but the Inuzuka have teeth."

--

Tenten was starving on her way home from the Hokage's office. She'd been asked a lot of uncomfortable questions, but she'd gotten out with her career intact (so far), and now all she wanted was a good meal and a nap. The first place she walked by was the open-air market and she walked into it immediately with the intention of buying something for dinner.

_Why_ for the love of all that was good did she have to run into Ino and her team? Did the universe have some sick sense of humor? She didn't want to face any of the Konoha Eleven, now or ever again. The only one of them she'd talked to since that mission with Kotaro was Neji. She was still working herself up to the confrontation with Lee. She could not deal with anyone else.

"Tenten!" Ino cried, spotting her.

Tenten swallowed the annoyed groan in her throat and quickly paid for the beef she was getting for her stir-fry tonight, hoping she could get away before Ino made her way through the crowd to her side. No such luck.

"Tenten!" Ino said again, following the words with an awkward pause. "Um… how are you?"

Not in the mood to deal with nosy kunoichi. That was what she wanted to say. Instead, she substituted, "Fine – how are you?"

"I heard you're expecting!" Ino said cheerily.

Tenten stared at her. Ino looked so innocent with her wide smile, as if she'd just pointed out some wonderful, happy occurence rather than the unpleasant slap in the face that this surprise actually was. How on earth was Tenten supposed to respond to that?

"Miss? Miss – your change."

She quickly shifted gears, directing her attention to the butcher, then looked at Ino again, feeling overwhelmed. "I guess you've heard…"

"I think it's wonderful! You're the first one from our group to… you know…"

Oh yes, she knew. She could feel her face reddening. "Well, I…"

"We were all so surprised when we heard! I mean, I never knew that you had a boyfriend or anything."

I don't, Tenten wanted to say. I don't have anyone. She opened her mouth but stopped herself in time. She was so emotionally on edge she felt like she could burst out crying right there on the spot in the middle of the market crowd. Could life get any more ridiculous? She wanted to melt into the ground.

Sakura appeared. _Oh god, _Tenten thought. Now there were two of them. How on earth was she going to get away from two of them?

"Ino, could I talk to you?" Sakura said, smiling very fakely.

"In a minute – so Tenten, do you have to stop taking missions right away? Are you still going to train?"

"I… uh, I'm…"

"Ino, seriously, can I talk to you _right now_?"

Sakura grabbed the other girl by the elbow and started to lead her away. "Well, I'll see you around, Tenten," Ino said. "Oh – if it's a girl, my mother says she has a heap of old baby clothes she wants to give you – so let us know, okay?"

"Miss – your change?"

Tenten turned her back on the vendor and walked away without the change. She could feel the gazes of everyone within hearing distance and she wanted nothing so much as to vanish on the spot. Just disappear, cease to be. What would it matter if she did? There was no family to mourn her – her parents were long dead – and pregnant she was no use to her team. Even after that, who knew? How long would she be off the lineup? She'd fall behind the others in her group, and then she'd always be behind, and then – was this the end of her career whether or not she had an abortion?

She was going to be sick.

No, she was hungry.

No, she was _definitely _going to be sick. Or cry.

She stumbled through the market thinking only of home. She wanted to get there now and shut the door and just be alone She could still feel the stares of all the other people on the street – the shinobi, the ones who'd heard the rumor. They were all staring at her, weren't they? She'd become one of those people who was talked about. She'd become gossip fodder. She felt nothing like a kunoichi anymore. She had used to be strong, independent – now what was she? It felt like everything was closing in on her. Her heart sped up accordingly.

"Hey – hey, are you okay?"

The edges of her vision clouded black. It was just as well – she was ready to let go of reality anyway. She heard the murmur of people but her vision was quickly fogging.

"Tenten – hey, you, can you get some water please? Tenten, here, sit down."

There was a hand on the small of her back leading her somewhere. Blindly, she followed it. She let whoever it was bring her somewhere close and sit her down on a bench, and then she let that person bend her foreward until her head was between her knees. She breathed more and more slowly, and the world began to realign itself. The audio was turned back on – she heard the mushed clamor of the market crowd and her vision opened up again – she could see the dirt floor below her very clearly. She slowly sat up, careful to control her breathing all the way.

"Here."

A cup of tea was held up to her face. She took it in her hands and sipped it carefully. She felt so weak. God, was this what it had come to? What had happened to the kunoichi? She was just another poor little woman now. _Five years of field training and this is what I've become.._

"How do you feel?"

"Better," she said and finally looked to the speaker. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a mouth that was at once feral and friendly – when he grinned his upper canine teeth poked out over his lower lip. "Kiba?" she said, surprised.

"You were really pale a minute ago. Your lips were blue. You want to go to the hospital?"

"No, I'm fine."

He looked like he wasn't buying it.

She felt the handle of the grocery bag around her wrist, still. She looked back to the dirt floor. Oh god, what now? She supposed Hinata and Shino would be next. Could she stand seeing them? What about Lee? When would he make an appearance at this horror show, she wondered?

"You sure you don't want to go to the hospital?" he asked.

"I just want to get away from all these people," she answered honestly.

A few moments later she felt the hand on the small of her back again, then the grocery bag lifted off her wrist, and then she was being led away. She opened and closed her eyes slowly while she concentrated on regulating her breathing, and she was dimly aware of the crowd receding. Then she was sitting again and had the chance to catch her breath.

When everything came into focus she saw that the scene in front of her was the lake in the park, and she was sitting on a bench, and human voices were far away if present at all. She breathed a few times, enjoying the silence, then shifted her attention to the boy beside her. "Where did you come from?" she asked.

"I was just buying lunch. Are you sure you're okay?" 

"I'm fine. I'll be fine," she said irritably, reflecting that she'd used that word so much in the past week that she went to it like an old habit.

"You don't look fine," he said bluntly. Tenten reflected that everything seemed like an arrogant joke from him because he was always wearing that grin. "Seriously – let me take you to the hospital."

"No. No hospitals," she said. _No more attention, please._

"Okay, whatever you want."

She leaned back on the bench and closed her eyes. Her body felt heavy. Was she already starting to gain weight? She thought she had at least another month before her body started to go haywire. If she didn't have an abortion. Now it would be a royal mess. She wouldn't be able to train, her breasts would get huge and she wouldn't be able to use a bow… this was the beginning of the end.

"I wanted to apologize to you," Kiba said, derailing her train of thought completely.

She blinked at him. "What? What on earth for?"

"I should have known at the beginning of that mission, and I should have said something," he said. "I mean, I noticed the change in your scent, but I didn't know what it meant. Geez, my Mom chewed me out after we came back. That's something any Inuzuka should know."

Her cheeks reddened again when she realized what he was talking about and she quickly looked away. "I don't know why you should beat yourself up about it. _I _didn't even know."

He was quiet for a minute. "So this wasn't something you planned?"

She gave him a slow, sardonic look. "I'm seventeen. I'm a kunoichi."

"No, I guess not," he said, grinning with an air of extreme discomfort. "Well, hey – accidents happen."

She didn't deign to respond to this. She was busy raking her mind for ways to politely get rid of him.

"You know, my mother was only eighteen when she had my sister."

Oh god – was this conversation never going to end?

"We were talking about it last night," he explained sheepishly.

"You mean you were talking about _me _last night."

"Well…"

"It's okay. Who isn't?" She got to her feet abruptly, meaning to flee the scene, but as soon as she did the blood rushed out of her head again and she had to take a moment and focus on breathing.

"Hey."

She felt the hand on her back and the hand on her shoulder leading her to sit down again. She shrugged them off. "I don't need anyone to help me," she said. "Please – I know you're just trying to be nice, but I'm just trying to get home."

"At least let me walk you there?" he asked. "It's on my way, and Akamaru's back at the farm, and I get kinda lonely when I'm walking by myself. Consider it a favor to me."

She stared at him blankly for a few seconds. What was with this guy? She knew who he was, of course, as much as she knew any of the Rookie Nine, but she didn't think she'd ever actually said more than a few words to him outside of a mission. She pulled away from his grasp with an irritated sigh. She didn't care what his issues were that he was trying to project onto her, and she didn't need him, just like she didn't need Neji or anyone else, and furthermore she didn't want him to _think _she needed him. That was the last thing she needed: yet another person who thought she was helpless.

He followed her home like a stray puppy. He didn't even have the decency to look contrite about it when she glared at him as she fumbled with the key to her door. Even after she collapsed on her couch she could actually hear him in the kitchen getting her a glass of water. Could this guy not take a hint? How many times did she need to tell him she just wanted to be alone?

He sat down in the chair across from her couch – the uncomfortable cheap chair she'd saved from her parents' furniture – and sat with his elbows on his knees and rolled the glass of water between his hands. "My mother said that if you ever wanted to talk… eh, I don't really know what she meant," he added, brushing it off. "But if you did, you know where the farm is… don't you?"

What the hell was that supposed to mean? Tired and annoyed, she let him pretend she'd fallen asleep on the couch. Her eyes had been closed for several minutes. He couldn't smell sleep, could he?

And the idiot _still _didn't leave. He just sat there for minute after agonizing minute, and she had the distinct feeling that he was watching her the whole time. "Your team's really worried about you," he said softly. "Lee doesn't know what to do with himself. He's bugging the living hell out of everyone, trying to figure out who knocked you up."

After a few more minutes, she heard him set the glass of water on the coffee table and get off the chair. Then she heard her door close.

And then, for the first time she could remember since her mother died, curled up on her couch, she cried.

--

"I like him," Akiko said as they walked away. It was getting near sunset and the street was starting to clear out.

Yoshio was staring straight ahead, but he wasn't really seeing anything in front of him.

"I like the Inuzuka clan much better than the Hyuuga or the Akimichi. I don't think it's fair that they're not considered one of the noble clans."

"The Hyuuga are all real jerks," she added after he continued to ignore her, "like the Matsumoto with a bloodline limit. And the Akimichi just make me uncomfortable. I like the Inuzuka much better."

She'd given up on a conversation with him and her book was halfway out of her pocket when he blurted out the question that had been on his mind. He spoke it just loud enough for her to hear and no one else – not that there were too many people on the road that time of day, but this was not something he wanted overheard. She let go of the book almost immediately and, to her credit, didn't so much as crack a grin when she said, "Sure, but… the light's not very good now. We should go back to my place."

"How far away do you live?"

"Just a few blocks down."

She lived in a one-room apartment on the second floor of what looked, to Yoshio, like a seedy old building that someone had tried to fix up. Her two windows had a fantastic view of a brick wall ten feet away. She had a half-size fridge and a stove, but other than that she had no furniture. Apparently she slept on a bedroll. Her bathroom was tiny – barely enough room for a shower and a toilet – but the light above the sink was plenty bright. She stood next it with her hands on her hips. "Go on," she prodded.

Feeling unbelievably stupid about this, Yoshio opened his mouth.

Akiko leaned in close and instructed him to tilt his head back a little and open wider. Yoshio felt like he was at the dentist.

After a few moments she leaned back. "Nope. Not even a little bit."

He relaxed a little. "Are you sure?" he asked.

"Positive. Take a look for yourself."

He checked in the mirror. She was right. There was nothing even remotely canine about his canines.

Akiko smiled at him in the mirror. She looked completely different when she smiled. "You can rest assured your teeth are completely dull. I guess I was wrong," she said, her smile falling. "Um… sorry."

Yoshio glanced at her, then shrugged. "It's not your fault no one will tell me who my father is."

Akiko walked back into the main room of her apartment, over to where her "kitchen" was. "You're pretty obsessed with this whole thing, aren't you?"

"Wouldn't you be?"

"No. I don't know my father and it doesn't bother me. Want some milk?"

"What?"

"I asked you if you wanted milk…"

"No, I mean, you don't know who your father is?"

Akiko laughed weirdly as she poured herself a glass. "Well, I mean I think I know who probably he is, but I've only seen him once. I think he lives in Tanzaku city, still. Don't know though. My aunt hasn't heard from him in a long time, and she's the only one in the family who still talks to him."

Yoshio's brow crunched up. "Oh," he said.

She had a couple cushions on the floor around a small crate that she apparently used for a table, and she sat down on one of the cushions and sipped her milk. Yoshio felt a little odd just standing there, so he sat down as well.

"Your mother at least told you who he was though, right?" he asked.

"Not really. But I'm pretty sure it's him because he's the only guy she ever lived with."

"Can't you just ask her?"

For the first time, Yoshio saw his kunoichi teammate blush. "Um… She's not really around anymore."

"Oh… sorry," he said.

"She didn't die or anything," Akiko added quickly. "She's just, you know, not around."

Yoshio didn't like talking about personal stuff to begin with, so he let it stop there. He wasn't sure why he didn't just get up and leave. He didn't have any reason to be here anymore. Still, Akiko didn't seem to mind that he was still around. "You know… a lot of random stuff," he said awkwardly.

"I read a lot," she said, rather unnecessarily.

"So you can probably recognize all sorts of famous ninja."

"Yeah…"

"Even foreign ninja?"

--

Tenten and Lee stood back-to-back in the copse, keeping their eyes open while Neji did a long-distance scan. "Half a mile south, they're regrouping," he said after a minute. "The one with the katana is a healer. I give him thirty minutes for full chakra recovery after he's done with the other three."

"Shit," Tenten said out loud. She relaxed her stance and Lee relaxed his, and the three faced each other.

"We'll have to strike now, then," Lee said. "I have recovered to full strength. We must not wait."

Tenten didn't even have to look at Neji to know he was thinking the same thing she was: _if Lee says he's back to full strength now, that means he'll _actually _be back to full strength in about three hours. _Some things never changed.

Lee'd had to open his fourth gate, which wasn't cataclysmic, but considering this was probably only the first of many fights with the other team, it didn't bode well. He had a gash on his thigh as proof that they weren't dealing with a misplaced band of Ame chunin, either. Neither had Tenten or Neji gotten out of it totally unscathed. In fact, the other team seemed to be suspiciously well-informed on Team Gai's typical strategies and jutsu. It was almost as if they'd been chosen specifically to counter the strengths of Team Gai… which could only mean one thing.

This had clearly been an ambush. A well-planned one, at that.

What Lee had spotted back in the clearing was not the flash of a spyglass but the wink of a camera lens, Neji explained. He'd never seen a camera like it before. It seemed to be mounted in a tree about ten yards away, and it seemed to be battery-powered. They couldn't find out any more about it without getting any closer, and they couldn't get any closer without giving away the fact that they knew they were being watched. Instead they kept moving on their former trajectory, and Neji with his Byakugan found several more cameras throughout the forest. The fact that they were cameras rather than sentinels was inherently disturing, since Neji's technique worked best with chakra sources.

"We're outnumbered by one, and that one is a healer," Neji said aloud. "Even if he uses up all his chakra healing the others and is unable to fight, we're still at a severe disadvantage."

"I get the feeling that that's their strategy," Tenten said. "They don't seem to want to meet us head-on, but the fight was calculated to wear us out as much as possible. They're going to keep the pressure on until we're out of chakra."

"They must be trying to capture us," Lee said.

"I agree. This doesn't appear to be a death trap," Neji said.

Tenten could almost see the cogs turning in his mind, and she knew what conclusions he was drawing. Being on the same team for so long meant that their deductions followed roughly the same patterns. The opposing team was clearly tailored to counter Team Gai. Team Gai's original mission objective had been to capture a suspected spy on his way back to Ame, so it was only natural that Team Gai was chosen: they were the foremost team in Konoha right now for live captures, so any rich client who wanted his money's worth would be getting their services. Which meant that whoever had commissioned this mission was clearly part of the conspiracy.

The question of _why us _barely entered Tenten's mind. They were Konoha jonin – valuable, experienced jonin at that. Either someone wanted them out of the way, someone wanted them interrogated, or someone wanted to get their hands on a Hyuuga. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. Regardless, knowing their enemy's exact objective wasn't going to help the current situation.

Lee dropped his head. "We need to retreat, don't we," he said rather than asked. 

"But they're cutting off our retreat!" Tenten hissed.

"He means we need to retreat north."

"Toward Ame?"

"Yes."

"But what if that is part of their plan – to drive us north? If they are from Ame, they might have reinforcements waiting," Tenten said worriedly.

"It's no use," Neji said. "If we try a lateral retreat, they'll overtake us before we've recovered. They obviously know the terrain much better than we do."

"Damn it, I just know they've got another team waiting, Neji, I just _know _it," Tenten said, gritting her teeth. "This is the perfect setup for a double ambush."

"It is better to avoid the danger we know is there than worry about the danger we imagine," Neji said.

Tenten huffed at him. She met Lee's gaze and saw that he was silently on her side, which was mollifying, but she also knew that Lee would agree to follow Neji's plan anyway, which was slightly infuriating.

The other option, she knew, was that they could split up. Sacrifice one member of the team so that the two others could return to Konoha and get reenforcements. But what if _that _was the enemy's objective? What if they only wanted one Konoha jonin for interrogation?

That was kind of beside the point, however. As a rule, Team Gai almost never split up. They each had excellent techniques, but their main strength was definitely in being greater than the sum of their parts.

"Fine. Then let's get moving already," Tenten said. "Lee, how's your leg?"

"As good as ever. A scratch like this will not slow me down."

Which probably meant that they'd better cut their usual pace in half if they didn't want to kill him with blood loss.

"Formation B. Due north. We do not split up for anything, agreed?" Neji asked.

Tenten and Lee assented, Tenten with an irritated glare, and they took off.

--

Yoshio and Akiko met the next morning in front of the Hokage's tower just before their team was supposed to meet. He dug the photo out of his pocket as soon as he saw her, and she stood up promptly and took if from his hand. "No way!" she cried, staring at it. "Which one?"

"The weird one with the facepaint."

"No _way!_" she shrieked.

Yoshio put a hand over his ear quickly and looked around to see if anyone had overheard. "So you know who he is?" he asked, forcing his voice to be as dull as possible.

"Well _duh, _Yoshio. How can you not know? He's around Konoha all the time to see his sister, and it's not like that's a face you could miss."

"I've never seen him before."

"Sheesh, the Kazekage's brother? You really think so?" She sighed deeply. "Oh well – in your case, the only solution might be to rule out every single other male ninja there is anyway. I'll see what else I can find out about him…"

Over the next few days she dug up a little bit of information on him, but all she did was bore Yoshio half to death with descriptions of the art of combat puppetry. He might have gotten sick of it and let it stop there if it hadn't been for a chance meeting later that week.

He was with Rikyu and Akiko, waiting for Naruto-sensei again, and he happened to see another team of genin walking toward the Hokage's tower. He recognized Taiki, a boy from his class he used to partner with for sparring exercises, and another classmate. Taiki nodded at him. Yoshio glanced at his teammates – Rikyu was brooding and sullen, and Akiko was already deeply buried in one of her books, so he walked over to Taiki. "Hey."

"Hey. Is that girl on your team?" Taiki asked, eyeing Akiko.

"Yeah," Yoshio said.

"Wow… sorry."

Yoshio shrugged, feeling weirdly defensive. "She's not that bad."

"I thought she couldn't even do easy taijutsu. Wonder how she graduated."

"How's your team?" Yoshio asked, eager to not be talking about his own anymore.

"They're good. Sensei says if we get another C-rank mission and do well, we could take the chunin exams in a few months." His face darkened. "We were _going _to have a mission to Suna tomorrow, but then Daijiro got a stupid cold…"

Yoshio's stomach froze. "Suna?"

"Yeah, some delivery or something. It's not really a C-rank mission, but at least it's an excuse to travel, right?"

Yoshio's mind was racing. "So if your team can't do it, who will?"

"I dunno, probably some older genin. It's just a delivery, it's not that big a deal…"

Akiko came to attention sharply when Yoshio announced his idea to Naruto-sensei. Rikyu looked torn, as if he couldn't decide whether it was the greatest idea ever or whether he was irked that it was Yoshio's. Naruto-sensei didn't looked convinced at first. "Eh… well, we could try. It would be different. You guys can't travel that fast yet but… maybe this would be a good way to learn! Yeah! Unless it's a C-rank mission… But we could go see Gaara! But it's going to take a long time. Ano, what do you think, Akiko?"

Akiko looked up, surprised. "What?"

"You want to go to Suna?"

Yoshio had been getting the feeling that Naruto-sensei was beginning to take Akiko's constant reading a little personally, and he seemed to like catching her off-guard like this.

Akiko shrugged. "Sure. This mission will pay more because it's outside Konoha, right?"

Yoshio raised his eyebrows at her.

"I'm saving up for a table," she explained.

Naruto-sensei made up some crazy argument for the Hokage's benefit – he wanted to test out their skills away from home, he would use it as a survival exercise, something like that – and the Hokage listened to him until her patience had run out. "Fine, fine, take it. But you'd better be back in less than two weeks, or your entire mission fee is forfeit!"

Once the mission was officially theirs, Rikyu was visibly excited. "Yeah! We're going to Suna!"

"Meet at the gate tomorrow morning at eight o'clock sharp!" Naruto-sensei said to them. "Bring… whatever you think you should! Your first lesson will be to see if you know how to pack for this kind of journey!"

"How long will it take to get there, sensei?" Akiko asked.

"Well, uh… we don't know yet. This is like a test, see? You don't know how long you'll be travelling, so you'll really have to think about what you'll bring, you know?"

"Yeah! Yeah! We're going to Suna! This is just like a C-rank mission! You guys better listen to me once we get on the road – it's dangerous out there! Hey sensei, can we work on taijutsu on the way?" Rikyu asked.

"Eh… if we have time," Naruto said. Yoshio thought his sensei looked like he was having some misgivings, but he didn't care. He was going to Suna – it was almost like it was meant to happen – and he felt like he was finally going to get some answers.

--

**Author's Note. **V-chan is the Beta Of Might. Many thanks! Also, I would like to say thank you to my reviewers. This story would have stopped months ago without your responses. I less than three you all!


	6. Chapter 6

6.

o

"Sensei! Hey, sensei! Like this?"

Rikyu launched an attack heel-first at a bush on the side of the road. Yoshio, who was walking beside his sensei, flinched sympathetically when Rikyu overshot his target and went soaring into the underbrush.

"Well, uh… yeah! Sort of!" Naruto-sensei said. "But maybe you should wait until we stop for the night before practicing any more, right? You're kind of using up a lot of chakra."

"As if attacking a stationary object meant anything _anyway_," Akiko grumbled as she adjusted the pack on her back. Her normal disinterested mood had turned black. Just outside the gates that morning, Naruto-sensei had confiscated the only book she'd brought with her.

Rikyu created a racket disentangling himself from the bush he'd tried to take out. A few seconds later they were moving as a whole team again, Rikyu jogging a little to catch up with the others and simultaneously trying to dig a cluster of burrs off the front of his pants. He had a shallow red streak running across his face, too, but he didn't seem to notice in the least. "My brother was so jealous when I told him we were going to Suna! He's like… he's all trying to practice for the chunin exams again, and I told him about our mission, and he was like, _no way! _ He pretended he didn't believe me! Sensei, can you believe it? Hey, hey, is it true that the Kazekage's killed a thousand ninja? That's a lot, right? I mean, like, compared to other ninja?"

It might have been the fact that they were on a real mission for once, or it might have been the fact that Rikyu was doing something his older brother never had – or it might have been that he'd experimentally tried a couple soldier pills before setting out and had a lot of energy to kill, but ever since they'd left Konoha, Rikyu had not been able to keep his mouth shut for thirty seconds straight.

Naruto looked really uncomfortable for a second, but then, instead of answering the question, he said, "Hey Rikyu! I've got a challenge for you!"

Rikyu's face lit up with excitement. "Okay! Yeah sensei!" He punched a fist into the air, having completely forgotten what they had been talking about.

"See how far ahead of us you can run in five minutes, and then see if you can ambush us when we get there!"

"All right!"

Probably to show off, he did a very clumsy and transparent kawarimi, and then he became a blur of dust far ahead on the road.

Naruto sighed and paused in his tracks while his other two genin stared him down. "Sensei… is that really safe?" Akiko asked.

"Eh, what?"

"Letting him go off like that – he'll probably get into some kind of trouble, and then we'll have to slow down to get him out of it."

"Oh well... it'll be a lesson to him! And you should remember it, too: eat soldier pills one at a time. In fact, that's today's lesson."

Akiko looked less than impressed. Yoshio started walking again, and as he did he took the kusari-gama off his back and started to idly twirl the chain. Akiko skipped a few steps to get even with him. Naruto didn't join them right away, but Yoshio didn't bother turning around to see why.

"…I mean, that was today's _first_ lesson!" Naruto's voice rang out behind them. Akiko and Yoshio stopped again and turned toward him.

Naruto looked supremely satisfied with himself about something – which naturally made his two remaining genin nervous. Whenever he got excited about teaching them, something bad was sure to happen. "For today's second lesson, I'm going to teach you how to travel like real ninja!"

Yoshio noticed that Akiko had tensed up suddenly. "What do you mean, travel like real ninja?" Akiko asked nervously. He remembered that she had only just learned how to climb a tree with chakra.

Naruto seemed to remember this at the same time. "Yoshio – you go on ahead. Yeah, try to sniff out Rikyu's trap! That will be your next lesson for today! And Akiko, ah, well, uh… we're going to have a review session!"

Akiko was speechless with horror.

Yoshio smiled to himself meanly as he walked past her. "Good luck," he said out of the corner of his mouth. He noticed that her hand had automatically reached for the pouch on her leg where she usually kept her book, but since Naruto-sensei had taken it away from her, her fingers searched fruitlessly. It looked like she wouldn't be able to hide this time.

Yoshio could hear the excited cadences of Naruto-sensei's lecture-voice as he continued down the road, swinging the chain of his kusari-gama again. Rikyu would probably try to attack from behind – given that Rikyu would assume that kind of attack would be more likely to succeed. It wouldn't, though. Yoshio was no more full of himself than any other twelve-year-old, but he knew that he was stronger than Rikyu, and he'd worked with the guy long enough to pick up on a lot of his idiosyncrasies – like the almost guaranteed attack-from-behind strategy. As much as Rikyu trained, there was just something that he couldn't move beyond. He was so fixed on the idea of winning a fight that he didn't think about how he could make himself stronger, only how he could inflict damage on the other guy, who was usually Yoshio. But by now, Yoshio really didn't think he had much to be afraid of. Rikyu might be strong, but he was easy to predict.

After walking for a long while, Yoshio sensed Rikyu's not-so-subtle little spike of killer intent. That was another thing that Rikyu was not good at: masking his chakra. Yoshio was pretty sure that Rikyu didn't actually want to kill him, but the guy was definitely out for blood, and he never seemed to care whose. Yoshio could almost see the movement behind him. Rikyu would have been hiding in one of the trees by the road, cloaking himself (but forgetting to cloak his chakra), waiting until Yoshio was just in front of him, and then he'd probably try to drop on Yoshio from above with that extremely destructive vertical heel-kick that Naruto-sensei had shown him the other day…

Yoshio spun around at the last split-second and easily dodged Rikyu's foot. While he moved he angled the twirling chain of the kusari-gama so that it caught against and wrapped swiftly around Rikyu's still-falling leg. Yoshio stepped carefully out of the way of the arc of the weight at the end of the chain, trying to move with the conservative grace that Neji was always trying to teach him. _Let there be no wasted movement. Even the slightest breath is a waste if it is unnecessary._

He slid left and jerked the chain just enough to make Rikyu too unsteady to land on his feet. And then he stared at the road. Because Rikyu wasn't lying there like he was supposed to be. In his place there was a squirrel. One with a bloody tail. Rikyu's aim had improved a lot lately.

These thoughts passed through Yoshio's head in less than a second, and as soon as he comprehended that he'd been had by a kawarimi, he spun on the ball of his right foot. Too late. Rikyu's fist met his cheekbone, and Yoshio reeled.

The good thing was that this had happened once or twice before, and Yoshio knew better than to let himself get distracted – Rikyu would take advantage of any split-second Yoshio was out of it. Yoshio ducked reactively and avoided a roundhouse blow, using the blunt handle of his kusari-gama to swipe at Rikyu's ankles. He was still unbalanced from the first hit, so there wasn't a lot of power to it, and Rikyu dodged in time.

Fights with Rikyu were usually short and brutal, but no matter what Yoshio did he couldn't seem to end this one with the usual ease. Rikyu was being unexpectedly creative – or maybe he had just learned a few new moves. Yoshio realized with a start that he'd just about doubled his speed compared with what it was when their genin team formed. Not only that, but there didn't seem to be any move with the kusari-gama that surprised him. It was almost like Rikyu had actually been paying attention to what Yoshio was doing lately – but that wasn't possible, was it?

The sun climbed in the sky while the fight burned on. Yoshio was surprised by what he was up against, but he was determined not to give Rikyu the satisfaction. Sweat beaded on his forehead and was quickly whipped off when he had to spin-dodge, and although Yoshio was getting slower with exhaustion moment by moment, Rikyu seemed to be speeding up – it was almost like the idea that he might be gaining on his teammate was enough to energize him.

They finally came to a stalemate – the tip of Yoshio's weapon held up against Rikyu's stomach, while Rikyu pulled his punch short and let his fist pause just when his knuckles were squarely against Yoshio's forehead. It was a remarkable show of control from someone like Rikyu.

Paused like that, their eyes met.

After the moment had passed, Yoshio removed his blade from Rikyu's stomach, and Rikyu's fist vanished. It wasn't a win on either side, but it was probably the best fight they'd ever had. Yoshio was almost going to say something a moment ago, but the expression Rikyu was wearing totally killed any sentiment he might have had. Rikyu was furious. "Damn it! You're just lucky. If I wasn't so worn out from walking all morning I could have beat you easy," Rikyu said.

Yoshio didn't deign to comment. He sheathed his kusari-gama and started walking again.

"You're such a girl," Rikyu taunted from behind him, obviously trying to bait him for another go. "You don't have the guts to be a ninja, you, you pansy…"

Yoshio kept walking.

A few moments later Rikyu joined him with a cold shoulder.

They walked hours like that, and Yoshio started to realize something: silence from Rikyu was about as friendly as conversation with a normal person. In a weird way, it was a step up. They didn't so much as glance at each other the whole time, though – just kept walking and staring straight forward.

Rikyu never even asked where the others were. He was even more surprised than Yoshio when, later that afternoon, Akiko sprang out of the trees and landed in front of him. Her face was red, her hair was a mess, there was a hole in her pants over a bloody knee, and she looked downright pissed. She was almost panting too hard to say, "Naruto-sensei is a hateful man."

Before Yoshio could figure that out, Naruto-sensei dropped down beside her, grinning as widely as ever. "Okay! Hey! How many lessons is that today? That's three, right? That's at least three! I'm the best sensei ever! Hey guys, guess what? Akiko-chan can teach you how to travel like ninja now!"

"I can do no such thing," she said irritably.

"Sure you can! You got this far, didn't you?"

"I'm tired," Akiko said.

She looked it. Yoshio judged that she'd gone through most of her chakra already.

"Sensei… are you going to teach us to travel like ninja too?" Rikyu asked with renewed energy.

Naruto smiled widely. "Yeah! You want to?"

"Yeah! I bet if we go real fast we can make it to Suna by tomorrow!"

Akiko looked like she wanted to cry.

o

Tenten knew that this would be the hardest part.

It took every scrap of spirit she had left to keep her back straight as she walked into the clearing. It looked like Neji had just finished meditating and Gai and Lee had just gotten through their ridiculous round of warm-ups, and they seemed to be talking with each other. She felt a pathetically wistful pang when she realized that she wouldn't get to be on this team or join them for missions for months. It might as well have been years. Neji, naturally, was the first one to notice her approaching. He didn't say anything, but the alertness in his eyes gave him away, and then Gai and Lee were staring at her too.

It would have been nice to dissolve into the earth, or to vanish out of existence in a puff of air like a clone. But she was over that phase now. Reality was a bitch, but it was what it was. She kept her back straight when she walked toward them. She surprised herself with the realization that, out of the three of them, Gai was the one she was least looking forward to seeing. He had an unreadable expression now, his rarest of faces. She'd overheard someone saying that he was sobbing about it at a bar the other day and wondered if that could possibly be true, then decided that she really didn't want to think about that.

Something came over her sensei all of a sudden and his face broke into a wide smile. "Tenten! What fortune you came to join us today! I have uncovered a fascinating pair of scrolls from the library regarding steel weaponry of the far west, which the Hokage has been so kind to lend me!"

Tenten felt something ease out of her chest, and she smiled at him. The feeling was short-lived, and her face fell in a moment. "Ano… it is only fair for me to tell you that I won't be able to fulfill my role on the team for… some time."

She'd just spoken about it with the Hokage that morning. It was, by far, the hardest thing she'd ever had to do. Even alone with the Hokage, a person she could trust even if she trusted no one else, all the questions were painfully embarrassing. _I need to know if the paternity issue will cause a problem. Whatever you say here will be held in strict confidence. Is there any reason you would not want the father to know about this?_

The Father. The damned Father. That was all that anyone seemed to care about.

"The Hokage says… that she has two new chunin, both weapons specialists, who might be able to fill in… which would cause the least disruption in the team dynamic, she thinks," she said.

_You might even find a permanent replacement for me, _she added to herself.

Gai nodded dumbly, obviously not knowing what to say. Blushing hard, she excused herself and left her shell-shocked team behind her.

She sped off to one of the more distant training fields and pulled a bow out of one of her scrolls. It was so much easier to deal with weapons than to deal with people. After setting up a simple bull's-eye target, she took her place at the far end of the field. She gauged the distance, tested the wind with nothing more than the skin of her face, pulled, aimed, shot. The arrow landed precisely on the target's center. After breathing in and out, she nocked another arrow. Doing this, she felt more like herself than she had in days.

It hadn't been an easy decision, and she was almost certain she'd made the wrong choice. She'd lost a lot of sleep over it. She'd come very close to just walking into the hospital and getting the abortion over with. But in the end she couldn't, and the only serviceable answer she was able to come up with was: cowardice.

She'd probably killed a lot of innocents already in her career – what was one more?

But she couldn't do it. There was something in the back of her mind singing a refrain she didn't want to listen to (a ninja's life is short, this may be your only chance) and for some reason she couldn't ignore it. It was a good and noble thing to have a child for Konoha, supposedly. The bigger the population, the better. The bigger the pool of shinobi-in-training, the better the cream of the crop would be. A ninja village thrived on numbers. So she was doing something good for Konoha in the long run in spite of the fact that she was taking herself out of action for a while. In a way it was a kind of charity, like donating a bag of blood at the hospital, only she would be donating slightly more than blood.

She nocked arrow after arrow. The six following the first made a perfect hexagon around it. Symmetry was always such a comfort to her. The fact that she was still capable of this was even more comforting.

A familiar prickle on her neck told her that she was being watched with Byakugan, and little to her surprise Neji appeared at the edge of the clearing a few moments later. What did surprise her was that Lee was with him. She acknowledged their presence, but didn't pause in her exercise. For a minute they just watched her, and even though this should have made her uncomfortable, with the bow in her hands she felt like nothing could touch her.

"Look, I'm giving it up to the orphanage," she told them. "I've spoken about it with the medics and… it won't be that bad. I'll just be off the roster for a while."

Lee looked like he wanted to say something, but he was tongue-tied. Tenten ignored it and let fly another arrow. She was busy dealing with her own mixed feelings – she couldn't handle everyone else's.

"How long?" Neji asked.

"Seven months, about. After that it'll probably take me some time to get back in shape." She found it was much easier to deal with this if she just thought of the situation in terms of her body. She was going to gain a lot of fat and lose a lot of muscle, and she'd need to deal with that as soon as possible… after. The sooner she had this kid and could put the whole ordeal behind her, the better.

"What about the father?" Lee asked.

She nearly dropped the arrow in her hands. Happily, she still had enough muscle memory to keep her fingers moving. "That's none of your business," she chided him.

"Have you told him yet?" Lee pressed.

Tenten spared one sharp look at him (that left his face beet-red) before going back to her target practice. She was careful not to give away anything else, but she could feel Neji's sharp eyes studying her, and she knew she was naked under his gaze.

It was a dangerous moment to be under that gaze, because Lee had hit on the worst part of the whole mess.

Have you told him yet?

_How can I tell him when I don't even know who he is?_

o

"You have genin now? _You _have _genin_?" Kankuro asked, dumbfounded.

"Yeah, so? That's not as bad as what I heard about you," Naruto said, squinting his eyes at the puppet-master and crossing his arms defensively.

"What's that?"

"I heard you were going to be a father."

He waved it off. "That's different. You don't exactly have to pass any tests before… well, you know."

They'd arrived in Suna exhausted and bedraggled in the morning but had delivered the medicine on schedule. By the time they'd reached the city hidden in the Sand, Yoshio was too tired to even remember why he'd wanted to come in the first place. His feet killed from traveling through the desert all day and he had a bad sunburn on his nose and ears. It was probably dehydration that enabled the three genin to pass out completely as soon as they reached the beds in the room they'd been given. Akiko fell face-first onto her mattress and was drooling on her pillow before she could even kick off her shoes. Rikyu and Yoshio wordlessly passed a tall bottle of water back and forth until they had emptied it, before collapsing on their own beds. Naruto-sensei had disappeared before they fell asleep, and they didn't see him again until that evening, after the three of them had already woken up and bathed and sat around the barracks wondering what to do with themselves. No one seemed to want to venture out onto the street.

The towel stung Yoshio's face when he dried it off, the material chafing the red skin of his nose. Glancing in the mirror, he saw why Akiko had laughed at him after they'd woken up. His cheeks were so bright, it looked like he was wearing blush. Being pale and freckled herself, she'd had the foresight to be prepared for the desert sun.

_Note for next visit to Suna: bring sunscreen._

If his mother had been around, he was sure she would have reminded him, but when they'd left she still hadn't come back from that mission. It wasn't unusual for a mission to take longer than expected, so he wasn't surprised, but he had the strangest feeling that she was drawing it out on purpose just to avoid talking to him. Which was just another reason for him to take matters into his own hands. Which brought him to the ninja that Naruto was talking to now.

"What is it with babies lately!? Everyone has to go and have babies!! It's not right. We're ninja! We're not supposed to be doing things like that!"

"Sure we are," Kankuro said. "Shinobi life is short. If we don't get on with it, we won't have time to make more shinobi."

Yoshio saw Akiko clap a hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing.

Sabaku no Kankuro, without his face paint, was not immediately recognizable. Yoshio hadn't realized that it was him since Naruto-sensei hadn't remembered to introduce them. He thought they wouldn't make a big deal out of a genin team in Suna to deliver medicine, and even though they were being escorted to the Kazekage's office it didn't occur to him that their ninja escort might be the Kazekage's brother. But as they walked out of the building where they were staying, Akiko tugged on his sleeve and whispered this information to him. Rikyu looked askance at this but didn't say anything – he was too awed by the strange shinobi and was hanging on the man's every word.

It was a short walk from that building to the Kazekage tower. Kankuro and Naruto spent it either talking about people they knew and the crazy people they'd married and had babies with or conversing in some kind of code that Yoshio couldn't follow. By the time they reached the Kazekage's office he was more aggravated than anything else. Could this man be his father? What was the evidence for that, again, exactly? He looked at Akiko as if to question her, but she just shrugged despondently. She was still sorely missing her book.

To their eyes, accustomed to crowded, shady streets and the omnipotence of the color green, Suna seemed completely dead. Buildings in Konoha had a tendency to grow out of one another. If someone thought their house or business was too small, the place would sprout new wings like tumors. When someone wanted more space, instead of moving away, they tended to just build up and out. Architecture wasn't generally an art of planning, but one of figuring out how to make what was already there keep standing up. Suna was totally different. Everything was a monotonous tan, the houses and towers all matching like a set of blocks, and it seemed like the only living things were people and dogs. All the buildings had edges rounded by wind erosion, and if it were any darker they would have blended in completely with the street, like anthills poking up out of the earth. The little round windows made the similarity even stronger. Yoshio thought it was kind of neat, but after a few blocks, his eyes started to hurt. He focused instead on the shinobi in black that was leading them through the village, trying to pry away any detail that might give the man away as his father.

By then the sun was getting low. Kankuro nodded at a guard and opened the door to a tall tower in the center of the village, then ushered them in.

"Uzumaki Naruto," a dry, gravelly voice said, commanding the genins' attention immediately.

Yoshio couldn't say why, exactly, having never heard that voice before, but he knew right away that this would be the Kazekage. Even if he hadn't recognized the red hair or the gourd on the ninja's back, he would have known. Sabaku no Gaara wasn't the tallest ninja in the room by far, but he had a way of making everyone around him feel smaller. The air seemed to crackle when he looked at Naruto-sensei. It could have been Yoshio's imagination, but his sensei almost seemed a little bit nervous.

"Hey Gaara! It's been a while!"

Yoshio couldn't tear his eyes off the Kazekage's face. Neither could Akiko or Rikyu. It was no wonder the people of Suna made him the Kazekage. He had a dead glare that was completely unnerving, one that made you think he was coldly calculating something, sizing up the situation – like if he found that someone was more trouble than they were worth, he would eliminate them without batting an eyelash. Yoshio had the feeling that if he looked away for a second he'd be murdered. He suddenly didn't question Rikyu's comment about the Kazekage having killed thousands. This ninja looked like he could kill at least that many and call it a day's work.

"Yes. A while," the Kazekage said. "Three years."

The hair on Yoshio's neck started to stand on end.

Kankuro, however, didn't seem to notice the murderous ambience in the least – if anything he looked slightly bored. While Naruto-sensei just babbled awkwardly. "Yeah… I've been really busy lately and I haven't had any missions outside Konoha for ages. … Hey! Did you see I have genin? Tsunade-no-baa-chan made me do it. It's pretty cool, though…" He trailed off.

The Kazekage didn't say a word, but his dead glare seemed to suck all the warmth out of the room

Kankuro cleared his throat. "This is the kind of situation where normal people would go out for a drink or something."

o

_Some mission, _she thought.

It was a moonless night, the only light was from the stars, they were far from any human habitation and, on top of that, they were close enough to the desert to be uncomfortably cold – they could even see their breath. A civilian would have complained. As an elite team of ninja, they could only focus on their mission.

Well, the mission was a bust: right now all they could do was avoid capture and get back to Konoha. They'd managed the first so far, but the second was currently out of the question. The enemy had cut off all paths of retreat and had the uncanny ability to figure out where they would fall back to next. Not only that, but they were definitely trying to split the team up and capture them each individually, and their tactics were starting to work. Neji and Tenten were huddled together at the base of a small outcrop. Lee was elsewhere.

Tenten shivered involuntarily. Normally she'd be able to control that kind of reaction from her body, but exhaustion was starting to get to her. She could see it in Neji as well, now that her eyes had adjusted to the dim light. She recognized the hollow look in his eyes from long experience. Also, he had a few stray hairs. When Neji's ponytail was coming undone, you knew you were in trouble.

"What are you smiling at?" he asked softly, surprising her with his attention.

She shook her head. "I'll tell you when we get out of this. Any sign of Lee?"

Neji had spent the last five minutes scanning with his Byakugan. It was a serious drain on his chakra, but he considered it more important to find Lee than to conserve his energy. "Half a mile south-southeast. The idiot is sleeping in a tree."

Tenten's face was a mixture of relief and anger. "Of course he's sleeping. You're the one who has the last of the soldier pills."

"He's the one who lost his pack."

"He wouldn't have if you hadn't insisted on retreating instead of…" Tenten stopped and steadied her breathing. "Let's not do this. Just tell me how we're going to get to him."

Neji shook his head. "He's surrounded. We're going to have to set up a diversion."

"How are we going to do that when we know they're watching every move we make?"

"I don't know," he said.

Tenten slouched back against the rock. This was a bad situation if ever there was one. She closed her eyes and racked her brain for ideas. No matter what she came up with, she almost immediately had to rule it out. Against her will she felt the desire to keep her eyes closed, to just sit here with her back against the stone wall for a while and rest her eyes…

"I think we should get some rest," Neji said.

Tenten's eyes shot open. "What?"

"We're going to have to fight to get to him, and we need actual sleep if our bodies are going to recover enough chakra for that. I think Lee may have the right idea."

Tenten softened. "You want to go first?"

"No. You."

She sighed and leaned her head back against the stone, closing her eyes again and trying not to feel too happy about it. This was already the worst mission they'd had in a year, easily, and apparently it was far from over. For the first time she allowed herself to consider the possibility that they might not make it back. The enemy was strong enough that this was not just her exhaustion talking: this mission had been a well-planned setup, and although they were giving their opponents a run for their money, it felt like they were doomed from the first confrontation.

She indulged herself. So this was it. Team Gai's last stand. Of course it would happen just before she could marry Neji. Of _course _it would. The timing had never been right for her and Neji, so it made perfect sense that just when it looked like it would finally work out, fate would throw one last wrench into the works. They'd even talked about having kids together. They'd even talked about _names. _ They'd had plans, damn it.

And there was so much she had to tell Yoshio, still. So much left to teach him. He wasn't strong enough to protect himself yet. He wasn't nearly as strong as he would need to be.

She heard a rustle of fabric and sensed Neji settling in next to her before she felt his body heat. She was shocked awake, though, when she felt his arm circle around her back. "Neji?"

"It's freezing," he said, pulling her closer.

In spite of everything, she grinned. She let her head topple onto his shoulder, which was much more comfortable than a wall of stone. "You're not going to try to play that 'we only have one blanket' trick on me again, are you?"

"I would, if we had a blanket."

She laughed, once, softly, and then she started to drift off. Why was he doing this? They'd made a deal to keep it professional during missions as much as possible. Just before she lost consciousness it occurred to her that maybe he was thinking the same way she was: they might not make it back. They might as well enjoy what they could while they could.

That was a horrible thought, but she didn't dwell on it. She knew that when she woke up she would be completely alert again and focused on the objective of getting home alive. But for now, she could fall asleep with her head on his shoulder, just in case.

o

"Rikyu!" Akiko snapped.

"What?"

"You're drinking sake!"

"So? Everyone else is."

"You're only twelve!"

"This is Suna," he stated, as if this excused all offenses.

Yoshio wasn't entirely convinced that there was no drinking age in Suna. He was pretty sure the bartender was only giving them whatever they wanted because they were in the same group as the Kazekage, and Yoshio didn't blame the man.

"Well of _course _this is Suna, but that doesn't give you the right to… I mean… it's against the law!"

He rolled his eyes at her and took a large sip. Yoshio noted the fact that he was fighting back a grimace.

Meanwhile, Akiko seemed to be grabbing for arguments. "Don't you even know what that does to your reaction time? Not to mention, if you do it too much, it'll stunt your growth."

Rikyu eyed her from across the table. Then he grabbed his little bottle of sake in his fist and chugged the entire contents. After he'd slammed it back down on the table, he looked at her and burped.

"Rikyu!" she admonished.

He stuck his tongue out at her.

She looked to Yoshio in her desperation. "Could you help me out here?"

Yoshio shrugged. "I'm not going to stop him." If he was totally honest with himself, he was kind of curious to see what would happen.

"I'm going to get some more," Rikyu announced.

Akiko crossed her arms and glared, splitting her fury between Yoshio and Rikyu, who quickly disappeared into the crowd. "He's going to get us in a load of trouble," she said.

_With who? _Yoshio wondered. He sincerely doubted that Naruto-sensei would punish them for drinking sake, and none of the Suna ninja seemed to care. They did get the odd stare, especially from some of the younger ninja, but Yoshio guessed that had more to do with the fact that they weren't from Suna. Yoshio didn't like the way the locals watched them out of the corner of their eyes – like he had three heads, or like they expected his team to launch an attack at any moment. He was on edge himself. Suna was definitely not what you would call a friendly place.

If there was tension in the air, though, their sensei was oblivious. He was now sitting in a corner with the Kazekage, rosy-cheeked and talking rapidly with a lot of hand gestures. The Kazekage did not look like he was amused at all, but then, Yoshio thought, he wasn't the kind of ninja to ever show emotion, even when off-duty – and come to think of it, the Kazekage was never really off-duty. Kankuro, on the other hand, was leaning back and staring at their sensei and laughing at his speech, clearly entertained.

Akiko suddenly stood up from the table. Yoshio raised an eyebrow at her. Ignoring him, she proceeded to stand on her chair and scan the entire restaurant. "Yoshio…"

"What?"

"Where's Rikyu?"

o

The scene that greeted them on the street outside the restaurant was not the kind of thing that was going to encourage inter-village relations, Akiko reflected.

In the middle of the street stood Rikyu. He had his sleeves rolled up, and he was flexing the muscles of his arms.

Approximately ten feet in front of him stood three Suna ninja. They looked like teenagers. More importantly, they looked like chunin. Akiko was tempted to point out that ninja wars had been started by lesser altercations, but she wasn't entirely sure that this would dissuade them. Yoshio just stood there with his arms crossed obstinately on his chest, looking at the scene as if the whole thing was below him. For all that he was an excellent shinobi in most situations, Akiko dearly wanted to sock him.

Him _and _Rikyu. Boys were so _stupid_.

Something had to be done, clearly. "Rikyu, be reasonable," she said, her voice wavering a little. "I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding."

"Yeah, right! You should've heard what this guy said about Konoha."

"What did he say?"

"I'm not repeating it," Rikyu said darkly.

"I'll repeat it," the tallest Suna chunin offered. He had blond hair and seemed to be the leader of the little gang. One of his comrades looked like he weighed about 300 pounds and, when he grinned evilly at Team Nine, revealed a chipped front tooth. He winked at Akiko. After a moment of utter shock, she scowled at him. _Rogue!_

"You just keep your mouth shut!" Rikyu cried. "When I'm done with you, you won't be able to say anything!"

The blond nin took out an oversized kunai and stared at it thoughtfully. "You know, I've never gutted a little boy before," he mused. "I wonder if they die faster."

"You could cut out his tongue and keep it as a trophy," one of the others observed.

Akiko was well aware that intimidation was an age-old ninja technique, but it was not one that had any observable effect on Matsumoto Rikyu, unless it was to get him even more riled up. "You just try it, you, you… sand crawler!"

The blond snorted. "Oh. Oh god. Now I'm really scared. He's calling me _names._"

The big fat gap-toothed one laughed and pounded a fist into his palm.

"Quit stalling and fight me, you coward!" Rikyu said. "We're not out here just to mess around!"

"Could have fooled me."

Rikyu's brow lowered nearly to his nose. Akiko would have laughed if she weren't so scared. But what could she do? If she tried to stop him, Rikyu would just push her out of the way, and he'd already proved that she wasn't a match for him. Besides, it would be kind of embarrassing for Team Naruto to fight amongst themselves when faced with a threat from another village. Not unexpected, but definitely embarrassing.

The blonde Suna chunin laughed, but his eyes suddenly narrowed, causing the hairs on the back of Akiko's neck to stand on end. Rikyu readied himself for launch. _Oh please oh please oh please, someone stop him – I don't want to start a war!_

But Akiko was paralyzed with fear. Her legs didn't budge an inch.

Rikyu was in the air with a sailing punch that was aimed at the blonde's head when he stopped suddenly and jerked back as if he'd caught his uniform on something. Everyone stared in surprise for a moment.

Akiko couldn't figure out what had happened at first, but when she looked closer she saw chakra threads glowing in the air. They were firmly lodged on Rikyu.

"You're going about this all wrong," Sabaku no Kankuro said to the Suna chunin. "Look, if you really want to intimidate someone, you have to cut back on the fake laughter. It's just not working for you."

When the blonde saw Kankuro, the grin fell off of his face and his skin went visibly pale. "Kankuro-dono, I… uh, we…"

"Give it a rest. I hope you've got better things to do than pick fights with genin. Tell you what – disappear in the next ten seconds and I'll forget I saw you out here."

The chunin didn't second-guess their luck. They disappeared in a lot less than ten seconds. Then Kankuro let go of his chakra strings, allowing Rikyu to fall onto the ground in an uncoordinated heap. "Okay kids, now that you've seen all that Suna has to offer – bars, fighting, and sand - it's time to call it a night," he said.

Akiko breathed a huge sigh of relief. Crisis averted! She turned to smile at Yoshio, but she saw that his eyes were fixed on Kankuro, and he wasn't paying attention to her at all.

"I'm bringing you guys back to your rooms. It's your bedtime," he said. He started walking down the road and motioned for them to follow them. Yoshio kept his arms crossed and the cool, suspicious look didn't fall from his face. Rikyu, looking somewhat impressed with the Suna jonin, skipped ahead to catch up with him.

"We're ninja, we don't have a bedtime!" 

"Yeah, well if you want to pass out from exhaustion in the desert tomorrow, that's your call."

"Can't we go back inside?" Rikyu said. Akiko's pulse picked up again. He was probably just looking for another fight. (Nothing baffled her as much as the idea that someone could actually _want _to fight all the time.)

"You'd better not. Your sensei probably wouldn't want you to see him… in a few hours. He gets stupider than most after so much sake."

"I didn't realize this whole mission was an excuse for Naruto-sensei to get drunk with the Kazekage," Rikyu grumbled.

"Cut them some slack," Kankuro said. "They have a lot more in common than you will ever know."

O

"This is really dumb,"Akiko said.

Yoshio stuck his hands in his pockets and slouched against the balcony's railing. He completely agreed with her, but he wasn't about to tell her so.

"I admit you _might _kind of _look_ like him…" she began. He shot her a dirty look in response. "It makes sense. Maybe they couldn't admit that he's your father because it would cause an international dispute. I mean, she obviously wanted to raise you, but he's the brother of the Kazekage and the son of another Kazekage. I read that there was all kinds of legal trouble with his sister because _she _married a Konoha ninja, and she lives in Konoha permanently now… so maybe it makes sense. But this is ridiculous. Why can't you just ask him yourself?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Just because, okay?"

She sighed dramatically through her nose. "You know, for someone whose mother's famous for spilling ten times her own weight in blood in one battle, you're kind of a wimp."

"Where did you read that?"

"You don't know _anything, _do you?"

"Look, are you going to do this or not?"

She stomped one foot. "I just don't know what you expect me to do!"

"Do what you usually do," he said. "Get out your little notebook and pretend to be really interested in him." He'd realized a few weeks ago that the reason Akiko got along with adults so easily was that they always felt flattered when she started writing down what they said.

"I _did _want to get some information on puppet techniques…" she said. "Oh, all right. But you _really _owe me after this. Next time Rikyu tries to do something stupid, you _have _to stop him."

She stormed off into the room, red braid bouncing behind her.

Yoshio stayed on the balcony. In the parlor down below, Kankuro had hung around drinking tea and talking to some other ninja who was staying in the same building, a messenger from Kirigakure. Yoshio knew Akiko would be able to worm her way in. She always did. She wasn't shy when she was being nosy.

It was getting kind of cold out, and he thought about going inside, but he sat down on a chair on the balcony instead. He took all his kunai out of his pockets and dug out his polishing cloth too, and he sat and cleaned and tried not to think about the fact that Sabaku no Kankuro might be his father.

You didn't really notice it until the wind blew, but Suna nights were cold. The desert didn't hold in any heat. He kind of liked the look of it at night more so than in the day. Suna by day looked bare and lifeless, but at night the sky above was absolutely clear and you could see all the little round windows glowing. It wasn't that bad a place, he decided. It just wasn't somewhere he'd ever be at home.

When had his mother been here before, he wondered? Had she had a lot of missions here? Did _she _like it in Suna? He lost track of time while polishing his weapons and wondering again about all the things he didn't know about her.

o

On the roof above the guest quarters where the Konoha team was staying, Kankuro suppressed his chakra carefully. He didn't know much about the kid, but if his mother was training him he'd probably be pretty sharp for his age. He was totally engrossed in what he was doing, however, even though he'd obviously been at it for a while – there was a pile of newly-shined kunai and shuriken in the chair next to him. He angled his head a little to the side so he could get a better look. Yeah, the brat had changed a lot, but that was pretty much to be expected – the last time Kankuro had seen him, he'd been a toddler. He still looked a lot like his mother, Kankuro reflected fondly.

Out loud, he said, "That was pretty low."

Yoshio's hands froze and he looked up immediately. Reflexes aren't bad, Kankuro thought. Yeah, she's training him.

He leaped down easily and landed on the balcony, totally at ease, leaning back on the railing. Yoshio's stare was intense. "Asking a girl to do your dirty work for you, I mean. That's just not right. Almost sounds like something _I'd _do."

The kid looked like he wanted to deny it at first, but he didn't say a word. He gathered up his kunai and stuck them back into various pockets with so much care and seriousness that Kankuro wanted to laugh. He sat in the cleared chair next to Yoshio instead and stared out at the village. Yoshio sat rigidly next to him and was so obviously uncomfortable with the silence that followed that Kankuro wanted to laugh again.

o

Tenten winced. There was a root digging into her back, just below her right shoulder blade. Staring up into the forest's canopy above, she found that, if she concentrated on the feeling of that intrusive little root poking at her, the pain in the rest of her body was easier to deal with. Wasn't that something she'd learned from Gai-sensei? She couldn't remember… it was starting to get hazy…

Angrily, she chomped down on the inside of her cheek. The acute pain gave her body a tiny shot of adrenaline and her eyes slid open again. How long until she died, she wondered? And where was Lee? The last time she'd spoken with Neji he said he'd lost Lee. How _could _he? She knew this was a weak point of hers: she got so used to being with Neji and his Byakugan that she felt completely lost without him. And Neji was nowhere to be seen or heard. She wasn't even completely sure when she'd lost him and ended up on her own. She was fighting for her life against another weapons specialist, a bitch with _swords_ (and that was so typical, the girls going after the flashy weapons – why did they all have to have swords? why couldn't they just pick up a kusari-gama and get the dirty job done? they were _ninja, _not ballerinas, for goodness sake…).

She'd killed the girl from Ame – it was a necessity. She wouldn't have lasted even this long if she hadn't. She'd made the mistake of letting her walk off with only a fatal injury the first time, and look how that had come back and bitten her in the ass. When she died, it would be her own fault.

And she was dying. Probably.

Oh, they'd been in worse situations before. Sometimes she felt like they'd seen everything. Team Gai specialized in combat and generally got some of the roughest missions Konoha would take. As a result, she'd been through this: the desperation, the frustration, the rationalization, the slow acceptance of fate. Always before she'd been saved at the last minute. Once, it was Gai-sensei appearing out of nowhere and stuffing a blood pill down her throat. Once it was Neji pulling her out of the water _after _she'd already lost consciousness. This kind of thing had happened more times than she could count.

Unfortunately, just because she'd been saved before didn't mean that this wasn't the real thing.

There was so much she still needed to teach him. There were things she couldn't teach him – what was she going to do about that? She'd never gotten a chance to talk to him and explain everything he wanted to know – so how was he going to find out without her? And what would he think of her when he found out on his own?

Naruto would take care of him, she was sure, and would probably train him to death – and so would Neji and Lee, if they ever made it home. It was all right. He could never be too ready. He could never be too strong. (But what if it wasn't enough?)

She could feel more blood seeping out of the gash that she'd cut in her leg to drain the poison from the Ame girl's sword. Damn it, the girl wasn't all flashy. They'd chosen her opponent well. Even though Tenten had won, she knew the poison in her bloodstream was the kind made to kill. All she could do was lie still, drain the wound as much as possible, and hope someone who _didn't _want to kill her found her before she died from the blood loss. But strangely enough, she was more worried about Yoshio than herself.

o

This was so weird. Yoshio had no idea how to start a conversation with a guy that might be his father. He really wished Akiko was there to break the ice.

"I didn't recognize you when I saw you. I'd forgotten your name," Kankuro said. "I should have recognized you. You look a lot like her. So," he said, leaning back and lacing fingers behind his head, staring up at the sky, "she didn't tell you either?"

"Tell me about what?"

"Who your father is."

Yoshio felt his heart start beating oddly with excitement. Did that mean…?

In response to Yoshio's questioning gaze, Kankuro shrugged and said, "Well, you know what they say: kunoichi are allowed to keep their secrets."

Something broke in Yoshio's chest, and he suddenly realized he was happy - incredibly happy that this guy wasn't his father. Which was a weird thing – that was what he'd come here for, wasn't it? Wasn't it why he'd gone through the trouble of getting his team this mission even though they were obviously not ready for it? Why did he suddenly feel like there was a load off his back? This guy wasn't so terrible, and he was supposed to be a really scary ninja… but for whatever reason, Yoshio was completely relieved that they weren't related.

Kankuro was looking up at the sky. Yoshio looked up at it too. So this guy pretty certainly wasn't his father. Good. That was definitely good. But it still left some unanswered questions, and Yoshio realized something that had eluded him up until now. "How come I know you?" he wondered out loud.

Because he did know him, somehow. He had recognized Kankuro in his mother's picture. Even now, without his make-up, there was an annoying feeling in the back of his mind that he was missing something he should have seen before.

Kankuro seemed to be thinking about it for a minute. "She and I used to be friends when we were younger," he said finally, not looking at Yoshio. "The second time I went for chunin, she was there with her team as well, and she kicked my ass in the final round of the exam," he added, as if that explained everything.

Yoshio felt like he was grabbing at a half-formed memory. He thought he might remember the face, but not much else.

"I visited her in Konoha a few times," he said. "You were way too young to remember much. So… what's she up to these days? Still doing missions with eyebrow guy?"

"His name's Rock Lee," Yoshio said. Just saying the name made him think of the grossly wide eyes, the embarrassingly tight bodysuit, the thumbs-up, and the unrealistically white teeth. And with that thought came the memory of muscle pain. He couldn't help grimacing to himself.

Kankuro laughed. "Yeah. Rock Lee. And Hyuuga Neji."

Kankuro seemed to be thinking about something for a minute, and the uncomfortable silence descended again. Yoshio scraped his toe along the floor of the balcony. "So she beat you in an exam?"

"Yeah. Shit, she got me. I thought I had her pegged, but she was half a step ahead of me the whole time. She's good with strategy. And she's fast. Damn it, it was embarrassing. I thought that match would be over in half a minute… I guess she had it out for me. She kind of had a grudge against my sister… long story."

Yoshio was already starting to drift off in his mind while the man continued to talk. Okay, if not this guy, and not any of the people he'd met before, who?

o

Tenten ran the back of her hand across her forehead, mopping off sweat as she walked. It was a hot summer day in Konoha, and so humid she could even see the haze under the canopy of the forest. Lee, walking beside her, handed her his bottle of water and she had to exercise self-control to not finish it off.

"Are you sure you don't want to have lunch with me?" Lee asked for what seemed like the hundredth time.

"I told you I'm not hungry," she said, quirking her lips at him. "How come you never listen?"

"Well… the medic says you don't eat enough."

"How do you know that?" she asked him sharply.

He was silent for a minute, apparently waging a mental battle, and then he broke. "But Tenten, it is vital that you eat enough to nourish the life force inside of you!"

She couldn't help it – she grinned. "And I thought I told you never to call it that."

"Sorry!" he said.

"It's okay, Lee." And she smiled at him to show that it was. Lee breathed a sigh of relief.

Lee was one of the few people she could stand to be around for any amount of time these days. He refused to do any taijutsu with her or sparring of any kind, but he saw nothing wrong with making sure she kept up her conditioning as much as she could. She had just passed the point of no return in her pregnancy, as far as she was concerned – the swelling wasn't just noticeable to her anymore. Her form-fitting tops had ceased to be form-fitting. It made her too uncomfortable to walk around in public most days – she didn't like the way people she knew stared at her.

But when training with Lee, she almost felt like things were normal, and for a few hours she could forget that they weren't. He treated her differently than he used to – it couldn't be helped – but at least she still felt like his teammate. Neji wouldn't even train with her. Whether this was because he was afraid of hurting her or because he felt too awkward about it, or some other mysterious excuse the Hyuuga had invented for this purpose, she was sure she would never find out from Neji. She didn't – couldn't – hate him for it, but she did wonder why. Almost enough to ask Lee…

They were just reaching the road – he would head off to the village to get lunch, and she would slip home the back way. It was now or never. "Lee," she started.

"Tenten?" he responded expectantly.

She looked at him, but the question died on her lips. She couldn't bring herself to ask it. "Tenten?" he asked again.

"If you buy me a good flank steak and a pound of broccoli, you can come over for dinner," she said, smiling.

He was so overwhelmed with joy that he completely missed that she had hidden anything from him. He thrust his fist into the air. "It will be done!"

He saluted her playfully and turned to run off to Konoha. She watched him go a little wistfully. She missed Lee – working with him, anyway. A mission with Lee was never boring. She could use a mission right now. Any distraction was a good distraction.

She made the walk home quickly. She'd learned to keep her eyes aimed straight forward so that she wouldn't have to stop and talk to anyone she knew. Since the unfortunate encounter with Kiba she had successfully avoided every other Konoha ninja she was on a first-name basis with, with the exception of Lee and Gai-sensei, of course. When she wasn't training, she only left her apartment for food and other necessities. And Gai had been happy to find her even more esoteric scrolls on weaponry and any manner of ninja art she felt a need to read about. She wasn't about to let her down time go to waste. As soon as her body was done with what it needed to do, she wanted to be back in top form. Better than top form. Good enough so that her team would take her back.

She stepped in and closed the door firmly behind her, breathed a small sigh of relief, and slipped off her shoes. (The apartment had the distinct smell of the chicken curry she had made two days ago. She would have aired it out, but she didn't like leaving the doors and windows open.) She turned her head and froze: there was someone sitting on her couch that she did not expect to see. She hadn't sensed any foreign chakra when she walked in, but then again, that level of masking was to be expected.

"Tenten," the visitor greeted.

"Tsunade-sama," she said.

o


End file.
